Last Sunday, I posted a summary of what I did on Lestrade's in the last ~10 days, like I usually do. (And I did more after that, but I haven't documented anything.) Also as usual, I asked for readers to invite their friends. 2 days in, we've now reached an all-time low for active users. As a result of my announcement, 2 members left the group, and no one bothered to invite anyone (this is indicated in admin stats.) I always feel bad when I have to ask people to help with promoting the site, but I feel even worse when I see they don't even bother to click that damn Invite button.
I don't even know why I'm bothering... I have so much love for this site, and so much plans to develop it beyond its current status as the most usable trading site ever. But I'm in a situation where in order for it to be the best, it needs to be popular. I'm more comfortable the other way around.
What should I do? Pay people to join the site? Give up on my 5-hour nights and devote them to marketing?
I think the title of this topic is a subconscious way of saying, popularity these days comes not from talent, but marketing.
Lestrade's needs to reach the masses to work. More users = more choice = more reasons for me to build tools to help with the widening opportunities. But the more features I add, the less active users we have.
tl;dr: Has anyone here any marketing skills? Does anyone know anyone who'd be excited at the idea of helping LT get more popular? Usually, the job of marketing guys is to take an ordinary product and make it sound like it's better than the rest. Here, the product is definitely better, and will continue to be so. It's just that I'm the only one working on it and I don't see why I should also deal with marketing, since it's something I've always been terrible at, and risk losing motivation to work on the multiple projects I have for LT right now.
I need your help, plain and simple! Please post suggestions!
I don't even know why I'm bothering... I have so much love for this site, and so much plans to develop it beyond its current status as the most usable trading site ever. But I'm in a situation where in order for it to be the best, it needs to be popular. I'm more comfortable the other way around.
What should I do? Pay people to join the site? Give up on my 5-hour nights and devote them to marketing?
I think the title of this topic is a subconscious way of saying, popularity these days comes not from talent, but marketing.
Lestrade's needs to reach the masses to work. More users = more choice = more reasons for me to build tools to help with the widening opportunities. But the more features I add, the less active users we have.
tl;dr: Has anyone here any marketing skills? Does anyone know anyone who'd be excited at the idea of helping LT get more popular? Usually, the job of marketing guys is to take an ordinary product and make it sound like it's better than the rest. Here, the product is definitely better, and will continue to be so. It's just that I'm the only one working on it and I don't see why I should also deal with marketing, since it's something I've always been terrible at, and risk losing motivation to work on the multiple projects I have for LT right now.
I need your help, plain and simple! Please post suggestions!