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I have 404,772 users. Now what?

pud.com

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Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#81

Post by pud »

staunch wrote: post #77
pud wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the correct answer (focus 100% on improving the product). The product is at a state where people like the idea of it so they sign up en masse -- but I'm not sure the site lives up to the expectation yet.

Focus on engagement . Sign ups are almost meaningless if the users bounce and never return. The reason Facebook is so amazing is not just that they have a billion users, it's that they have 80% of them checking the site 5x per week (or whatever). See how many users you can get into the habit of coming back to your site on a regular basis. That's the number that ultimately will drive everything: revenue, long term net…

I hear you regarding user engagement.

However when I first built the site, I envisioned more of a LinkedIn-type thing where engagement is relatively low but the value is in the database.

In other words, I don't use LinkedIn very often. But when I need to, it's a godsend (or at least, better than anything else that does what it does.)

Interesting.

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#82

Post by masonhensley »

rufugee wrote: post #70

I'm sorry, but $2,500 a month to run this site just seems high...I'm not sure what technology pud used to create the site, but it'd be interesting to know. I'd love to see my own sites get this much traffic, but damned if I could really afford to carry the success for too many months. This is where I really think the whole Rails (not saying he used rails...just using it as an example) argument of cheaper development…

He wrote a post about his backend in August, I think it relates to this project. (He uses ColdFusion)

http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back...

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#83

Post by rufugee »

masonhensley wrote: post #82
rufugee wrote: post #70

I'm sorry, but $2,500 a month to run this site just seems high...I'm not sure what technology pud used to create the site, but it'd be interesting to know. I'd love to see my own sites get this much traffic, but damned if I could really afford to carry the success for too many months. This is where I really think the whole Rails (not saying he used rails...just using it as an example) argument of cheaper development…

He wrote a post about his backend in August, I think it relates to this project. (He uses ColdFusion) http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back...

Missed that. Thanks!

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#84

Post by matan_a »

khangtoh wrote: post #29

All of the suggestions or what Philip had been thinking of are pretty "generic" solutions to the "problem". I spent 5 mins on the site, clicking around and my first impression of the Fandalism is the community and Fandalism's tag line is "Use Fandalism to show your work and meet other musicians". The community is most likely a mix of musicians AND music lovers. So even Fandalism's original goal of serving musicians i…

I know of a service which kind of does this (w/o the social network part tho):

www.wearelistening.org

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#85

Post by pud »

rufugee wrote: post #70

I'm sorry, but $2,500 a month to run this site just seems high...I'm not sure what technology pud used to create the site, but it'd be interesting to know. I'd love to see my own sites get this much traffic, but damned if I could really afford to carry the success for too many months. This is where I really think the whole Rails (not saying he used rails...just using it as an example) argument of cheaper development…

The good news is when you get a site with traffic numbers like this, investors (angel and otherwise) come out of the woodwork. So you'd have nothing to worry about.

In other words, I chose to self-fund. But if that's an option for you, you'd be okay either way.

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#86

Post by dools »

A few months ago I did a post[1] where I promoted a page I made for my dad Nick Dooley[2] which was basically to test whether a simple "online busking" model has legs.

The results were that about 4000 people downloaded the 1st track, about half that the second and roughly 350 each for the last two (I didn't do enough analysis to know if those last 350 or so people were the same ones or not).

Out of those, about 20 people gaves some "bucks" and 9 people subscribed to the mailing list.

I would say your best bet is to allow people to pay artists on the site via a "virtual guitar case" and take a small percentage of each transaction.

If you have 404,772 users and promote one per day and drive 4000 people to that page per day, and your average musician drives $40 worth of revenue per day, you know. You make some money. Then you just increase the traffic and away you go.

[1] http://www.workingsoftware.com.au/page/Thanks_Louis_now_here...

[2] http://www.nickdooley.com/

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#87

Post by pud »

rufugee wrote: post #75
redguava wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

builtwith.com is showing fandalism to be running on IIS. It was quite a rant you had about rails before even checking. You can write a resource hog application in any language just like you can write an efficient app in any language. Don't blame the tools. This isn't to say different languages are all the same with performance levels, I just think it's negligible compared to the different performance levels of develo…

Quite the rant? Really? Could've sworn I said I'm not sure what technology pud used to create the site, but it'd be interesting to know , and not saying he used rails...just using it as an example . Regardless, thanks for the builtwith.com tip. I haven't seen that before. It's a little odd though...if I'm reading it right, it says he's running IIS, but using java and cold fusion?

Fandalism runs on Railo, which is an open source ColdFusion interpreter built on Java.

http://www.getrailo.org/

Re: I have 404,772 users. Now what?

#88

Post by pud »

snowwrestler wrote: post #71
pud wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For more about ColdFusion and my ridiculous stack, see: http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back...

Site is not loading, which seems apt given the topic. :-)

Heh. Though the link goes to a Tumblr page. Fandalism is running fine. ;-D
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