Need help beating a website virtuous cycle...

I know a lot of forums, social networking, and other websites that require a membership base have this issue, and obviously some people are able to beat it. Hopefully you guys can help me find the "secret" as well...

So my site basically involves Ford Mustang event promotions. Car clubs are free to contact us to create an account that let's them create free webpages on our site and connect with enthusiasts. Mustang enthusiasts can then visit those pages or receive emails in their inbox for upcoming events in their area.

So on one hand, I need a membership base in order for Mustang clubs and other organizations to see value in joining our site and listing an event with us (even though it's free), yet there isn't much value to members in subscribing to our site if they don't see any events listed. I've attempted to populate the site myself, but its overwhelming with the shear number of events occuring over the summer.

Should I be focusing on getting subscribers to the site promising them of our site's objective or should I be focusing on getting car clubs to join up free and populating the site first?

 

Sometimes it helps to pay people to join and set up profiles. However, you should choose people who would genuinely be interested, or paying them will only lead to fake-looking interest. In any case, ordering reputation management services could help (i.e. hiring people to post reviews for you). However you are advised to base rep management on honesty--not like the ones who try to promote companies they would give a good rating to just because they're getting paid to do it

 

ElscottHavoc,

Your site suffers from a pretty common problem. You've got this great idea... but it needs members and traffic to work. Those members have got to come from somewhere, so if you don't have a good source, you're going to be spinning your wheels (because you're site is about cars. HA! I made a funny).

If you don't have one already, I would suggest adding a blog portion to your site. Post about Mustangs, car accessories, car events, even cars other than Mustangs. Whatever you think people would like to read. Promote this blog like you would any other: guest posts, blog commenting, social media, you name it. Get eyeballs on the great content of the blog and, once they're there, nudge them in the direction of the events/membership area.

Alternatively (or additionally), consider doing some advertising. Grab a banner on a popular car/Mustang site. Join a few Mustang forums and get involved in the community. Someone somewhere has a mailing list that targets car enthusiasts; find them and see if you can buy a solo ad.

You can do as Alyssa suggested and get some fake/paid members to populate the site initially, but long term, you've got to get real people - and if you focus on generating traffic (aka human visitors), you'll get them signing up.

Good luck!

 

Thanks for input. If there is one thing I've learned I've learned so far, it's there the moment I feel like I'm close to failing is when one actually closest to succeeding. Thanks for the ideas, some I will be working harder at to improve also.

I've been involved in the community for awhile as an enthusiast myself, so on one hand I know good places to reach out to, but I often question the ROI of advertising. I know I often ignore ads and wonder if others do too.

 

My business plan was essentially, release a unique new site like nothing else in the mustang community and promote it on a couple forums until it went viral in the community. My "my if you build it, they will come attitude couldn't have been further from the truth.

I mean, I did have a game plan but none of the press releases I submitted gained traction, major forums want $3-400 for sponsorship to have ads or Sig link, and a lot of the mustang clubs try to get me as a sponsor first even though my site is free for them and is designed to benefit them.

 

Try focusing on one core area. So lets use Iowa. Go to events there and pass out your business cards and flyers about your site promoting local events. Hopefully you can get a base area to see your site as the end all place to go for Iowa events. Then begin to branch it out from there.

I am into cigar smoking. I found a site for cigar smoking through a friend. I asked the guy that started it how he got so many people who smoke cigars from all over the US to use his site. He said he focused on SoCal events only. It became the place to look them up. Then those people started talking about NorCal and Arizona... and then those people did Texas and Nevada... and it just kept spreading until it was coast to coast.

 

I know that feeling all to well.

I want you to stop, write down how many hours you have spent on this so far, (work out how much your time is worth per hour and come up with a time X $hour = $xxx rate) add in all other expenses accumulated so far.

If the people in these clubs are aholes:

then really it doesnt sound like the sort of people that you wish to help out.
If you have been at this for a while, and spent thousands in time, (and other expenses) then it might be time to call it in.

Other then that,lets look at EBAY. To get sellers, they have promotions, such as free listing fees, free membership etc etc. They can still make money through other upgrades and listing options. You need to do the same thing, promote it as free to list etc (make sure they know that the normal value is $XX and that they are getting a discount) and then with events and content it should be easier to promote your site.
When something is free its free and you can join anytime, but when its free for a limited time... well people tend to tell others and stuff.

if this was my site, I would go to the car rallies, pay for ad banners in magazines. I myself buy magazines like "just bikes" and very rarely "just cars" type of magazines, and thats where you can advertise your site and events. I think most clubs if you go there in person have a noticeboard that you can post an A4 advertisement to (they might not let you) but this means you have to go to the different clubs in person and try your luck.

As for SEO, i would find any blog I can that relates to discussion of top end cars, and or mustangs, and try to make a few posts daily, and promote events, and link back to the event listed on your site. You would need to aim for posts daily to not just get traffic, but to hopefully gain long term users from google.

But how much will this cost to keep doing this for a year? versus how much can you realistically expect to earn?

I have done other sites, spent some big money, and I wish that I had stopped after 12 months, rather then kept borrowing and spending big just to have to pack it in after 2 years.

 

Thanks for all of the replies. Over the past couple of days and having read these posts, I've really gone back and reconsidered the site and how I'm promoting it. Let me begin by saying that I still really feel that this is a great idea, and something as a Mustang enthusiast myself I think will really be valuable to the community. Anyone who knows a little about the Ford Mustang would probably agree that it has one of the largest communities around, especially online.

For starters, after talking to some different people, I came to realize that the way I was promoting my site as free was sort of confusing. People can legitimately advertise an event on my site as free, there is however an optional feature that requires payment processing fees. In promoting my site, I was too early to mention these payment processing fees (trying to be up front and honest about different options) and what happened is that it scared people away. I'm going back through and simply promoting the site as a free source to advertise events on, and then when people get to the point, displaying to them the optional feature with a note about the payment processing fees.

People were also sort of confused about how to create events on my site. I've created both a printable sheet for people to use as well as beginning to work on some quick videos to actually show people the process. Trying to explain it in wording is often overwhelming and leaves people feeling like the creation of their online event flyers is more difficult than it actually is. Often, I try to show Mustang clubs some of the cool features of our site that actually help their own club SEO and I just confuse them, so I'm leaving that out completely from telling them. (We help their SEO by allowing them to create links to their club page on their event listings - as "do follows" because it's relevant. Plus, each new event flyer added to our site is essentially piggy backing off the relevancy of all previous event flyers created on our site. Meaning Mustang club B could get new people from Mustang club A simply from seeing an event listing on our site, and vice versa.)

Thirdly, I've recently received from a Mustang magazine I subscribe to an offer to gift a magazine subscription to another individual. I'm taking advantage of this to offer up a contest with one lucky winner receiving a free year long subscription to the magazine.

Lastly, I've been approached by a new Mustang parts company to use my blog to help post their products and I'm guessing help with SEO for them. This will help develop more content in my blog quicker and soon I'll look to ask them for a reciprocal link in the Mustang area of their site.

I've always felt like car shows were one of the best parts about the community, and I've always been disappointed to learn about shows after the fact, thinking "How did I not hear about it?" since I'm pretty involved. Unforunately, with a new baby I haven't had as much time to visit shows, but per your guys' suggestion, I'm getting flyers and business cards made for next year to hand out getting started right when the season starts. The problem that I feel exists now with findign events online is that there are almost too many Mustang sites out there to make promoting an event online to enthusiasts efficient. For instance, typically most states have multiple Mustang clubs, each with their own event calendars, so it's very difficult to take a quick glimpse of what's coming up soon. Forums often have event discussions, but topics often get buried quickly before people have a chance to see them and even if a person promotes an event at five of the largest forums out there, they're still missing out on the many enthusiasts that are part of much smaller forums. So my objective is simply instead of having event promotion be a secondary feature of my site, have it be the main feature of my site, and create a consolidated place to promote events and find events and then create ways for other sites to embed the information on my site into theirs - perhaps even through affiliate systems so they get rewarded.

Time and money wise, I'd have to say development of this site took quite a while, but mostly as a result of both doing it as a hobby on the side when I had time, the recent birth of our first baby, and the fact that I was really having to learn quite a bit of stuff. Money wise, I'd have to say most of the money I've spent has been for domains and hosting, a year of which was sort of a waste of money simply because I didn't have as much time to build the site as I thought I would. I've probably spent no more than $200 on hosting, 3 domains (.com,.net,.org), and a small Facebook ads campaign for likes.