Damnn - I just spent about 30 minutes typing out this blog and accidently deleted the whole thing by pressing the wrong button, I bet it's half as eloquent the second time around. :( I've not long been using a mac - previously I was a (fairly) long time Linux user - and before that a windoze user - so I'm still getting used to the shortcut keys - the one that always seems to catch me out is 'home', somehow I always manage to make the browser go 'back', instead of the cursor, losing all of my hard work in the process. Ahh well, guess that's what you risk when typing epic blog posts - lol.
Anyhows.... I digress....back on topic now.......
Since I started vdubber, I have been thinking of many different ways of promoting the site, the whole idea of vdubber, is a global online aircooled community, so to acheive this the promotion of the site needs to reach far and wide. There is already a perfect userbase out there, but this userbase is unfortunately already taken by other forums, so to speak - web habits are hard to break, and trying to lure users away from their daily dose of thier favourite forum, even for a short visit here, is a very hard task indeed. In fact it's a task that frequently keeps me up to 3am in the morning. Visiting other forums, and blantantly spamming them is not generally acceptable, (tried that once - lol) instead the only really acceptable way is to simply participate, and hope that someone clicks on the link in your signature. Whilst this is ok, and so far has been showing good results, it's a lot of work when there's only one person doing it - I currently go to over a dozen forums on a regular basis, and this take a lot of my time up (I'd rather be posting here).
So, what to do? how to solve the problem? Well, I figure we simply need to offer something better or different, or free. The better part is mostly already catered for with the software the site runs from - it's pretty feature packed - with stuff like video chat and instant messenger - plus, more to come in the coming months, it already knocks most other forums for 6. Free stickers, don't really seem to appeal to many - i gave a few hundred out at DOTVW here in Adelaide (yeah yeah, i know - they weren't top quality - but what do you expect at 2 days notice - lol), unfortunately i don't get to interstate shows at present, and the UK scene that I used to frequent is quite a few thousand miles away now.
One solution is to appoint representatives for other states / countries to go to shows and promote the site, but with such a small userbase currently, there are few members to choose from. This something however, that I will persue in the future.
My current idea is to utilise the skills of my partner (mellemel) who recently gave up work to have our son. She previously worked for a print house printing a range of stuff from business cards to bound books. So to keep her busy (just kidding babe :) ) we are now putting together an ezine - called vzine :) (great name huh - lol) This is something that can easily be emailed out to users or subscribers, and will be free to anyone who wants it. For the first issue I already have two articles for inclusion and will be kicking off the restoration of my 15 window deluxe walkthrough which will then be featured for the e-zine. The frequency of release has yet to be fully decided as it depends on many factors - but most importantly when we have decided on a schedule, we don't want to dissapoint people by being unreliable, we also don't want to commit to something we cannot acheive.
The e-zine will hopefully be ready within the coming month and once we know how much work is involved, we will commit to a release schedule.
Another promotional tool is the use of icons and banners by users, we will be putting some of these together soon, so if you want to add our banner or link to your site you will be able to use an official logo. We will also be adding to the merchandising range with some new garments, hats and mugs with the new site logo, so keep an eye out for a news release.
Well, I feel all blogged out now. Time to do some more development work on the site and then go visit some forums :)
Mick.