Where did all the meetups go!?

[Shiloh Lundahl]

I remember 6 or 7 years ago, the hosts of the BiggerPockets podcast would encourage investors to go to local meetups to meet with other local investors to network and learn about real estate investing in their areas. I don’t know if it is just me, but I have not heard a lot of encouragement these days about going to local meetups while listening to the podcasts.

On previous versions of the BiggerPockets website, it was a lot easier to find out where local meetups were being hosted because there was a link on the front page that read “meetups” and it would take you right to the meetup page where you could see a map where  people were having meetups in your area or in other areas across the country. It was fantastic for networking

I don’t know for sure, but it seems like at around the same time that BiggerPockets started hosting its own conferences and advertising boot camps and such that it became harder and harder to find where on the website that you could find local meetups.

This morning I searched the website to try to find where local meetups were posted on the website and it took me between 5 and 10 minutes to find it. And I was specifically looking for it. The location definitely was obvious, at least to me.

I’ve hosted monthly meetups in my area of Mesa, Arizona for around 7 years now and the majority of people that attended came from BiggerPockets. It’s been a long time since anyone came to my meetup that saw it advertised on the BiggerPockets website. At these meetups wholesalers found investors, investors found lenders, newbies found experienced investors and everyone got to learn  something. We would regularly have around 25 people show up every month.

So I’m wondering the reason why the link to the meetup section on BiggerPockets was taken off the front page and placed in a less obvious place on the website and why the map feature was removed.

Did anyone else notice this change? Or was it just me? If you search for the meetup section on the website how long does it take for you to find it? And would you say that finding it was obvious or not obvious

What are your thoughts?