Ted R. - Dogster

Community Development
and Participatory Media
Startup Epicenter
March 28, 2007
Ted Rheingold
Top Dog, Dogster, Inc.
ted@dogster.com
blog.dogster.com
January ’04 - March ‘07
January 1, 2005
• 70,831 members
• 70,303 pet profiles
January 1, 2006
• 165,451 members
• 177,529 pet profiles
January 1, 2007
• 303,445 members
• 335,004 pet profiles
Core Components of PassionCentric Web Communities
Great, Profitable
Community Sites
•
\
Community & Participatory
Sites are WAIT businesses
• You can bring a user to a website but you can’t make them do
anything
• Heavy spending up front rarely leads to growth that scales at the
same rate
• Work on building features that are truly popular and loved by
your community
• The longer you can afford to be in business, the better your
odds of success
Stay In Your Impact Horizon
• The Impact Horizon: your product must have an impact on your
community within this time frame
• Building product that will release beyond the clear vision within
your Impact Horizon great reduces the likelihood of it’s success
•
For Dogster:
First year was 3-4 weeks
Second year was 6-8 weeks
Third year: was 2-3 months
Fourth year is 4-6 months
Community Is Your Most
Valuable Asset
• Your community or users are your customers
• Treat them like dogs... er... GODS!
• Don’t leverage them, make tools they can leverage
• Know that everything you are doing is for them
Community Builder Mistakes
• Communities look after themselves
• To build a community all you need is to offer them community
features
• UGC is a commodity
• Your community will not mind that you are monetizing them
Community Musts
• Listen, listen, listen (but filter)
• Develop guidelines and rules, and enforce them consistently.
The less rules the better
• Reflect your community’s passion as much as possible
throughout your service
• Keeping your community happy and at ease is just as critical as
keeping your servers and site up
What is UGC?
• UGC = User Generated Content = a very inhuman term for a
very human action.
• People participate with an expectation that it will bring them
increased rewards.
• People have a strong emotional connection to sites they
participate in.
• Do not undervalue a person’s action as a pure commodity
• Don’t undercut the benefits they expect to get from their
participation
Reflect User Passion
• Everywhere in site. Design, UI, messaging, color palette,
vernacular...
• Be sincere
• Amplify their passions
• Don’t leverage your users (give them tools they can leverage for
their goals)
Revenue!
Primary Revenue Streams
• Sponsors
• Direct ad buys
} Integrated Ad Campaigns
• Premium memberships
• Virtual gifts
• Bulk ads
Think Sponsors
• Get the first one!
• Never too small to have a sponsor
• They can even be like an angel (our first sponsor worth
$150k)
• Caution! Sponsor don’t scale that well
Circle of Trust
Integrated Brand Campaign
• Stand-alone direct advertising
• Use different parts of your site to non-deceptive allow for
advertising.
• Write the copy for the advertiser and keep it in the community
voice
• Get the advertiser gives something of benefit to community
(contests, special feature, fame)
• If the advertiser is a trusted member of the community, their
campaign ROI will soar past banner ad results
Bulk Ad Networks and
Affiliate Programs
• Expect adsense to pay for monthly server fees. Anything
more requires serving millions per day or outsmarting the
system
• Network ads sell you on high CPM, disappoint you with
insufficient inventories of acceptable ads
• Affiliate network bounties don’t add up unless you are
selling thousands of items a month
Woof, Meow & Thanks
Check the sites: www.dogster.com & www.catster.com
Slides available: blog.dogster.com
Ted Rheingold - Top Dog -ted@dogster.com