In reply to Promotion Tips #2: Facebook Marketing

nikoma•23rd of November 2011

This is not easy. It could be easy to think "If Dolphin had this feature, and this and this and were designed in this and that way, then I would get tons of new members". Don't fool yourself. It has absolutely nothing to do with this. I often hear those comparing Dolphin to Facebook. Its like: "If Dolphin were more like Facebook I would then obtain success. Not true either. Then we would have > 100.000 Facebook clones and still no more members than today. What you really should see more do is to have something to offer around your niche site*.

I am not successful with my site at all (how do you measure success?). I have just above 2.100 members since August 3'rd 2010. If I didn't delete spammers or empty profiles, I would have about 3.800 minus those who deleted themselves. Success? Not really, but not failure either. 350 - 450 are active members monthly and they actually send a lot of mails to each other. Almost 44.000 mails have been sent internally. I know because I monitor my site daily and I use Google Analytics to measure my traffic and effort of my investments in ads on sites with related content and users.

Stop talking and say something clever about the topic: Okay, I'll try!

- Make your idea visible by buying banners on sites with related content and users!
- If you have a local site or are from a small country (like my self) get some flyers printed and do household delivery!
- Buy Facebook ads - they actually work (they did for me until I was denied by Facebook to place more ads)!
- Spend time everyday with your members, be present everyday. I use 5 hours per day!
- Stand up for your own idea and delete and block spammers even though it hurts to decrease Database!
- Offer your members branded iPhone and Android App - I've had between 100 - 500 downloads of Android alone!

When talking about payments, I have had payment "on" for a long time and it generated between 10 - 18 new payments during a typical month. How ever it decreased activity seriously making my site look like a cemetery on a cold February morning. So I decided to do adjustments towards females with a module from Market and allowed none paying members to send up to 3 mails per day for free. Activity increased again. Payments are rare, so I'll wait until I reach 10K and then up with payments again.

As I see it, we don't have anything new to offer compared to Facebook, Google +, successful local dating sites and so on. I don't believe in implementing games and such entertainment stuff. What people really want is a substitute for real life and as a consequence of this: Contact with other people! So until you have lots of members, offer that contact your self!

I have one wish pointed at Boonex: A more simple and intuitive Dolphin. More user-friendliness. Many basic movements are not intuitive enough for newcomers to Dolphin and people doesn't use more than minutes before they leave again saying: Its too complicated! I still can't wait for D8 to come.

Permalink•Reply•Plus•0 pluses

prolaznik•23rd of November 2011•to nikoma

If you think d7 is complicated just wait till d8 comes out lol.. D7 rolled out some two years ago, was it really usable at that time?...Remember all the alpha releases ,,betas,,...bug fixes and so on, and all that is waiting it's turn with d8.
My predictions for d8.
Add one year + before some betas roll out.
Add two more years give or take for bug fixes,/improvements.
So we are looking at about another 3 years before D8 is usable.
SOON this SOON that you forgot about that?..lol... So yeah see more

Permalink•Reply•Plus•0 pluses

Blogs

Help

Product

Company