Years ago, I put together a little local newsletter (The Wichita Gamer) for the roleplayers of Wichita, KS. It was meant as a communication tool for gamers to find each other, sell stuff, etc. It didn't do too well because it lacked retailer support... though they all said they liked it, half of them wouldn't display it where people could find it and only one contributed any money toward it. (It was free and I was paying for copies out of my own pocket, hoping to get some donations and/or advertising money once it got rolling.) But it was mostly lack of exposure that killed it... in stores where it was displayed, it disappeared. Oddly, the store that stuffed it into a magazine holder full of ads for products that had been out of print for years didn't give away a single one. Now that the web has taken off in a big way, I've decided to resurrect The Wichita Gamer as an on-line service. (I'm already paying for a server, so it won't cost me any more than my time. And if I can sell a little advertising, it might even offset some of the cost of that server.) So what I'm here to ask is... how would you go about promoting such a thing (keeping in mind a minimal budget) and what steps would you take to make it successful? Since it's a local service (it's meant to get people together in person), banner ads on other sites are mostly pointless. I've got my own ideas for promotion, but I'd like to hear others. The "successful" part is challenging... because the Gamer is a discussion forum (mailing list) and want-ad/personals service, there's *nothing there* on the first day. The first user in the door doesn't see anything of interest, or at best, he sees a couple ads of mine. How do you get that user excited about the service and keep him coming back? How do you "seed" the service to make it look interesting before there are actually any users? Thanks! -- Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) GMAST List Owner We tend to judge others by their actions, ourselves by our intentions. -Dr. Ed Cole. ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/
Print business cards with the URL on them. Buy some small acrylic display stands (see officemax.com) to hold the cards. Print descriptive backing cards for the stands. Ask retailers to donate some counter space in exchange for advertising on the site. A word of caution: unless you have some design skills (or know someone who does) keep everything simple. Nothing says "this looks like a waste of time" like poor clip art or clumsily mismatched fonts. On the site, give local gamers a place to make their mark, such as a character gallery or a place to display information about their games. By directing others to "their" information on the web they will spread word of your site. At 4:31 PM -0500 7/6/00, Carl D Cravens wrote: >Years ago, I put together a little local newsletter (The Wichita >Gamer) for the roleplayers of Wichita, KS. It was meant as a >communication tool for gamers to find each other, sell stuff, etc. It >didn't do too well because it lacked retailer support... though they all >said they liked it, half of them wouldn't display it where people could >find it and only one contributed any money toward it. (It was free and I >was paying for copies out of my own pocket, hoping to get some donations >and/or advertising money once it got rolling.) But it was mostly lack of >exposure that killed it... in stores where it was displayed, it >disappeared. Oddly, the store that stuffed it into a magazine holder full >of ads for products that had been out of print for years didn't give away >a single one. > >Now that the web has taken off in a big way, I've decided to resurrect The >Wichita Gamer as an on-line service. (I'm already paying for a server, so >it won't cost me any more than my time. And if I can sell a little >advertising, it might even offset some of the cost of that server.) > >So what I'm here to ask is... how would you go about promoting such a >thing (keeping in mind a minimal budget) and what steps would you take to >make it successful? Since it's a local service (it's meant to get people >together in person), banner ads on other sites are mostly pointless. >I've got my own ideas for promotion, but I'd like to hear others. > >The "successful" part is challenging... because the Gamer is a discussion >forum (mailing list) and want-ad/personals service, there's *nothing >there* on the first day. The first user in the door doesn't see anything >of interest, or at best, he sees a couple ads of mine. How do you get >that user excited about the service and keep him coming back? How do you >"seed" the service to make it look interesting before there are actually >any users? > >Thanks! > >-- >Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) GMAST List Owner >We tend to judge others by their actions, ourselves by our intentions. > -Dr. Ed Cole. > >---------------------------------------------------------------- >GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/
The business cards are a good idea - another might be bookmarks. I keep tripping over the ones I get from Amazon when I order. And they keep the site in mind. You could ask them to slip one into every book they sell, or for permission to slip them in yourself. Or something like that. I think the design is very important as well, but I'd encourage you to do your best to make them as striking as possible -- not ugly, but eye-catching. A simple text card or bookmark won't do the job. I wonder if setting the cards out on the counter is enough -- people are much more likely to have the time to look at the card and think about surfing over to the site if it manages to make it home in their bag -- if you want for them to see the card on the counter fewer of them will get the cards home. -j > Print business cards with the URL on them. Buy some small acrylic > display stands (see officemax.com) to hold the cards. Print > descriptive backing cards for the stands. Ask retailers to donate > some counter space in exchange for advertising on the site. > > A word of caution: unless you have some design skills (or know > someone who does) keep everything simple. Nothing says "this looks > like a waste of time" like poor clip art or clumsily mismatched fonts. > > On the site, give local gamers a place to make their mark, such as a > character gallery or a place to display information about their > games. By directing others to "their" information on the web they > will spread word of your site. > > At 4:31 PM -0500 7/6/00, Carl D Cravens wrote: > >Years ago, I put together a little local newsletter (The Wichita > >Gamer) for the roleplayers of Wichita, KS. It was meant as a > >communication tool for gamers to find each other, sell stuff, etc. It > >didn't do too well because it lacked retailer support... though they all > >said they liked it, half of them wouldn't display it where people could > >find it and only one contributed any money toward it. (It was free and I > >was paying for copies out of my own pocket, hoping to get some donations > >and/or advertising money once it got rolling.) But it was mostly lack of > >exposure that killed it... in stores where it was displayed, it > >disappeared. Oddly, the store that stuffed it into a magazine holder full > >of ads for products that had been out of print for years didn't give away > >a single one. > > > >Now that the web has taken off in a big way, I've decided to resurrect The > >Wichita Gamer as an on-line service. (I'm already paying for a server, so > >it won't cost me any more than my time. And if I can sell a little > >advertising, it might even offset some of the cost of that server.) > > > >So what I'm here to ask is... how would you go about promoting such a > >thing (keeping in mind a minimal budget) and what steps would you take to > >make it successful? Since it's a local service (it's meant to get people > >together in person), banner ads on other sites are mostly pointless. > >I've got my own ideas for promotion, but I'd like to hear others. > > > >The "successful" part is challenging... because the Gamer is a discussion > >forum (mailing list) and want-ad/personals service, there's *nothing > >there* on the first day. The first user in the door doesn't see anything > >of interest, or at best, he sees a couple ads of mine. How do you get > >that user excited about the service and keep him coming back? How do you > >"seed" the service to make it look interesting before there are actually > >any users? > > > >Thanks! > > > >-- > >Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) GMAST List Owner > >We tend to judge others by their actions, ourselves by our intentions. > > -Dr. Ed Cole. > > > >---------------------------------------------------------------- > >GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/ > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/ > ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/
On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, John P. Jones wrote: > The business cards are a good idea - another might be bookmarks. I keep > tripping over the ones I get from Amazon when I order. And they keep the > site in mind. You could ask them to slip one into every book they sell, or > for permission to slip them in yourself. Or something like that. I wondered if I could talk retailers into letting me put bookmarks in every book. I don't know how they'll take that. Ideally, I'd just give a pile of them to the clerk and have one stuck in every bag. The only problem with either of these is the cost of handing out bookmarks to customers who have no interest, as opposed to customers taking them off a stack if they're interested. While bookmarks aren't terribly expensive, I'm not sure how many it would take to make forced distribution effective. -- Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) GMAST List Owner * The Idea Factory: Helping GM's Create -- http://www.rpg.net/ Hey! Don't pick up that Dog! !@#$*!?% NO TERRIER ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/
Brian Koppi wrote: > Ask retailers to donate some counter space in exchange for > advertising on the site. Or perhaps offer advertising in exchange for counter space and gift certificates to be given away in a (monthly?) contest on the website. Maybe offer to host retailer's pages if they don't have a site yet. Register with as many free and appropriate guides/search engines/web rings as you can. Put up as much good content as you can to get search hits. With the '6 Degrees' logic, someone in NC may come across the site and forward the link to a gamer he knows in KS. Net advertising prices have dropped due to low click-through rates; you might find it worthwhile to do a few banner ads. For example: http://www.wichitalinks.com/advertise.html Get an easy to spell/remember domain name. Put it on a magnetic sign on your vehicle. You might want to make a simple WML/HDML version of the site so people can hit it with new cell phones. > On the site, give local gamers a place to make their mark, such as a > character gallery or a place to display information about their > games. By directing others to "their" information on the web they > will spread word of your site. Great Idea if you can work it. Can be tricky if people put up questionable content. Worth checking out the Geocities, etc. legalese. Steve -- http://www.stevebarr.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/
On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, Steve Barr wrote: > Register with as many free and appropriate guides/search engines/web > rings as you can. > Put up as much good content as you can to get search hits. This is part of the problem that nobody's really addressed... all of the site's content is user-generated. I don't want to have to carry content unrelated to the core business to attract users. Ideally, what I need is to jumpstart the user-generated content to make sure there *is* content when the first user shows up. I'll start this by stealing the event schedules for the (few) local game stores and posting those. I'll actively solicit content from the gamers and game stores that I know. Hopefully that'll be enough to get things jumpstarted. > Net advertising prices have dropped due to low click-through rates; > you might find it worthwhile to do a few banner ads. For example: > http://www.wichitalinks.com/advertise.html I hadn't considered ads on local sites... I hadn't expected rates to be as low as $40/1000 impressions. But do remember that this is a non-profit, no-income site. Anything I spend on advertising is coming out of my pocket, which limits my advertising options. (While we may have banner ads, I don't expect them to generate much revenue and at best it will only offset part of our operating costs.) > Get an easy to spell/remember domain name. Put it on a magnetic > sign on your vehicle. This is a problem... I haven't decided if I'm ready to shell out money for Yet Another Domain Name. (I've got three and yearly renewal time is getting to be as bad as car tags.) I've been planning to use a hostname off of the Phoenyx like I have with several of my other sites... ictgamer.phoenyx.net. Unfortunately, we're stuck with a misspelled word thanks to a 13-year-old legacy. (ICT is our airport code and familiar to the locals.) -- Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) GMAST List Owner * The Idea Factory: Helping GM's Create -- http://www.rpg.net/ Where am I . . . and why am I in this handbasket? ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/
Carl D Cravens wrote: > On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, Steve Barr wrote: > > Get an easy to spell/remember domain name. Put it on a magnetic > > sign on your vehicle. > This is a problem... I haven't decided if I'm ready to shell out money for > Yet Another Domain Name. (I've got three and yearly renewal time > is getting to be as bad as car tags.) You can do what I'm doing and investigate those registrars which let you pay in Zeros, er, Euros: http://www.domainnamebuyersguide.com/ > I've been planning to use a hostname off of the Phoenyx like I have > with several of my other sites... ictgamer.phoenyx.net. > Unfortunately, we're stuck with a misspelled word thanks to a > 13-year-old legacy. I can't spell it correctly. :-) Which is part of my point. If you use what you're thinking of, each visitor will either have to get a hyperlink to the site or a physical item with the URL on it. If it was, say, www.WichitaGamer.com you could have it on a sign, say it to someone, etc. My test is you should be able to hear it once and be able to later go to the web and type it in. I think it would be cheaper in the long run to have one like that. I admit this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine so I'll drop the topic. Steve -- http://www.stevebarr.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/
On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, Steve Barr wrote: > I can't spell it correctly. :-) Which is part of my point. If you > use what you're thinking of, each visitor will either have to get a > hyperlink to the site or a physical item with the URL on it. Something we've never really had a problem with before. Were we starting the Phoenyx from scratch, we'd never name it that. (We wouldn't even use the name spelled right, because so many people can't spell it properly in the first place.) But since it was a dial-up BBS ages ago and you just had to know the phone number and not the name, it wasn't important and now we're stuck with it... can't imagine changing the name. > If it was, say, www.WichitaGamer.com you could have it on a sign, say > it to someone, etc. My test is you should be able to hear it once and > be able to later go to the web and type it in. I think it would be > cheaper in the long run to have one like that. I admit this is a bit > of a hobby horse of mine so I'll drop the topic. It's a perfectly valid point... I'm just not sure I want to shell out another $35 a year on top of what I already pay for every thing else. That would put me over $10 a month just for domain name registrations. My other concern is that the Wichita Gamer is really the reincarnation of part of the original Old Phoenyx Grill & Bar... its purpose was to serve *Wichita* but the Internet killed the BBS scene and we moved to the net to survive and gained an international audience... and hardly a person from Wichita subscribed to it. I'd like to keep the connection, but on the other hand, I'm not sure how many would even recognize it. I do occasionally run across someone who used to do BBSi that recognizes the name but doesn't recall what resources the BBS provided. So we may have just lost all the name recognition we once had... we haven't really had a dial-up crowd for a few years now, even when we still had dial-up capability. Most of our dial-up users had moved to using our Internet gateway mailing lists. I dunno. Thirty-five bucks doesn't sound like much, but it all adds up as this hobby nickle-and-dimes our hobby budget. I'm not sure if spending $35 on a domain name is going to save me $35 in advertising costs. It's something I'm still thinking about. -- Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) GMAST List Owner * The Idea Factory: Helping GM's Create -- http://www.rpg.net/ C:\WINDOWS C:\WINDOWS\GO C:\PC\CRAWL ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/
At 15:06 07-07-00 cdt, you wrote: >On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, Steve Barr wrote: >> Put up as much good content as you can to get search hits. >This is part of the problem that nobody's really addressed... all of the >site's content is user-generated. I don't want to have to carry content >unrelated to the core business to attract users. Ideally, what I need is >to jumpstart the user-generated content to make sure there *is* content >when the first user shows up. I'll start this by stealing the event >schedules for the (few) local game stores and posting those. I'll >actively solicit content from the gamers and game stores that I >know. Hopefully that'll be enough to get things jumpstarted. If you do not want to host information from other gamers (because of the time needed in upkeep, legal issues etc.), but you _do_ want relevant content, all the content will have to come through you. I do not know how much time you plan to devote to your project, but I imagine that this would be a full-time job! Obviously, you want content that will get you as a hit on a relevant search in a search engine. This could quite easily be achieved via a META-description -- virtually all search engines index these with a lot of weight. If you put "Wichita", "gaming" and other terms such as RPG, roleplaying game and stuff like that in the META-keywords tag, your site will probably pop up if a search is done on a gaming-related term _and_ Wichita. AltaVista has some documents about this on their help-pages. Because they are perceived as the biggest engine, they set the de facto standard. Use their stuff and all the other search engines will know how to deal with it. Hein ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/
On Sat, 8 Jul 2000, Hein Ragas wrote: > If you do not want to host information from other gamers (because of the > time needed in upkeep, legal issues etc.), but you _do_ want relevant > content, all the content will have to come through you. I do not know how > much time you plan to devote to your project, but I imagine that this would > be a full-time job! The relevant content is almost entirely want-ads. Gamer seeking gamer, gamer with stuff to sell, gamer with stuff to buy. While all ads will be moderated, it won't be long and I'll have it all automated to the point that I just checkmark ads I approve and they'll get posted automatically. It certainly won't be a full-time job. Other content is editorial-type stuff commenting on the local scene and the discussion groups, which will get along just fine with little intervention. (That we've got down pat, it being our core business.) > Obviously, you want content that will get you as a hit on a relevant > search in a search engine. This could quite easily be achieved via a I've got the keywords thing down fine. We've been promoting web sites on the web for a few years now. I'm trying to figure out how to promote it off the web. -- Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) GMAST List Owner * The Idea Factory: Helping GM's Create -- http://www.rpg.net/ A man about to speak the truth should keep one foot in the stirrup. ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/
Of course throw a posting to rec.games.frp.announce, many other local gaming registries do. On 6 Jul 2000, at 16:31, Carl D Cravens wrote: > Years ago, I put together a little local newsletter (The Wichita > Gamer) for the roleplayers of Wichita, KS. It was meant as a > communication tool for gamers to find each other, sell stuff, etc. It > didn't do too well because it lacked retailer support... though they all > said they liked it, half of them wouldn't display it where people could > find it and only one contributed any money toward it. (It was free and I > was paying for copies out of my own pocket, hoping to get some donations > and/or advertising money once it got rolling.) But it was mostly lack of > exposure that killed it... in stores where it was displayed, it > disappeared. Oddly, the store that stuffed it into a magazine holder full > of ads for products that had been out of print for years didn't give away > a single one. > > Now that the web has taken off in a big way, I've decided to resurrect The > Wichita Gamer as an on-line service. (I'm already paying for a server, so > it won't cost me any more than my time. And if I can sell a little > advertising, it might even offset some of the cost of that server.) > > So what I'm here to ask is... how would you go about promoting such a > thing (keeping in mind a minimal budget) and what steps would you take to > make it successful? Since it's a local service (it's meant to get people > together in person), banner ads on other sites are mostly pointless. > I've got my own ideas for promotion, but I'd like to hear others. > > The "successful" part is challenging... because the Gamer is a discussion > forum (mailing list) and want-ad/personals service, there's *nothing > there* on the first day. The first user in the door doesn't see anything > of interest, or at best, he sees a couple ads of mine. How do you get > that user excited about the service and keep him coming back? How do you > "seed" the service to make it look interesting before there are actually > any users? > > Thanks! > > -- > Carl D Cravens (raven@phoenyx.net) GMAST List Owner > We tend to judge others by their actions, ourselves by our intentions. > -Dr. Ed Cole. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------- > GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/ > ================================================================ -Coyt "The Internet, billions of electrons with nothing better to do." ---------------------------------------------------------------- GMAST Home Page: http://www.phoenyx.net/gmast/
