You build your social network, it's free, has no advertising, no malware, virus's, idiots and did I mention it was for free? FREE............ just in case you didn't hear me at the back. "But why is it free? How do you make your money?" they ask.
"Well", I reply, "i'm not in it for the money".
And then it goes quiet.................. "I don't get it, why would it be free? Is it a scam? How does it make money to support itself?"
And here lies the biggest problem facing anyone trying to build an independant social network and promoting it to people they don't know, or at least, don't know them.
People always cite Facebook, because they "trust" Facebook and "Facebook is free." Is it? It's so far from being a Free Lunch it's shocking.
Even getting people to look at your site before they join is a problem. People just don't trust links to sites unless it's something they've come across themselves. It has a "spam" feel to it, or they just feel like they are being cohersed.
So, I set up a Facebook Fanpage to promote my site.
Does it work? NO. I have more people on my Fanpage than my Network, why? I have no idea.
The fanpage is updated daily, do they jump on board? No. ( In my head i'm screaming "It's fr*ggin' free, what's the problem?")
Do those on the site use it? Yes, daily and they love it.
Can they get friends to join? No.
Why? the just have trust issues with sites that aren't Facebook or it's just a monumental effort to join. It must be.
So, while i'm on a roll, here's another point i've noticed.
My last site was a pay site, it was on Social Go. (This was until Social Go decided to go mental, introduce a new "Activity Feed" which didn't actually let you know when something was happening in the Groups, and the site thrived on it's Group Activity and it died a nasty death.)
Initially, the site was free. People would join up, post nude pics of themselves, treat members like they owned them and just generally gave me a lot of work to do.
So, I flipped it to being a pay site.
For the sake of less than a £1 a month fee, it killed that behaviour dead overnight.
The site became self moderating, it ran a nice little profit and all was good.
Yes I lost over half my members, but happily it was the members the site didn't want.
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http://www.fuzzies-world.com/
