Any successful Dolphin based community forums

Hello guys!

I've just started my own community called My Lifetime Partner--> http://www.mylifetimepartner.com/ and so far has only managed to get like 8 members. I wonder if there are any Dolphin based community out there that are really successfuly. By successful, I'm refering to those with more than 10k members.

The reason why I started this was because of the article I read from doshdosh.com about the owner of plentyoffish.com earning $10k/day from google adsense alone. I was so inspired and hoping that one day, I could dump my agonizing 9 hour job and spend more time with family while still earning money to feed my love ones. However, I think this will be a long shot.

So anyone there with "successful" Dolphin based community? Any tips you can offer how to get more people to join? Does paying for advertisement makes sense?

Thanks,
Sam

All Communities ..... 

Go around forums posting m8.

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Bambie Murphy

You are asking the million dollar question and yeah it is a long shot a reaaaal loooong shot. I don't want to rain on your parade but plentyoffish was exceptional and was at the right place at the right time and blah blah blah.

I see this question a lot. But maybe you should ask yourself the question, "Why would anyone want to join my site when there are thousands of other sites like this?"

Quick tip: You need to find your edge and exploit that "thing" that makes you valuable and different from the other sites.

Good luck!

Thanks Bambie and Melia for the insights.

Agree with Melia, I need to find my competetive edge. Maybe starts "small" by capturing audience on my own region. I did something stupid promotion  last night, joined OKcupid.com and start sending invites to my own dating portal..yeah..sent message one by one..I must have sent more than 150 messages, no one joined my dating portal so I was disappointed this morning seeing nothing has been added on my users list hahaha! Well I was adding people from US and Canada where hundreds of dating website are probably already in there.

So I should probably focus locally (I live in Philippines) so I guess my target would be Filipinos, then start jumping to other neighboring countries. So excited with this.

Cheers!

Sam

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Thanks AlphaOmega168! Thanks for the URL. I see that you're from Cavite? I live in Dasma Cavite

Small world,Yes I know I have your IP , anyway best wishes to you and your  site.

Regards,

alphaomega

Looks like that ads forum has about 64,000 users- that is certainly big.  Who owns it?  Do they ever show up here?  It is an interesting question- I would also like to know about other big, successful sites that were done in Dolphin.  Forget about PlentyofFish though - we all know that story - $10 million a year run out of a little apartment in Vancouver.  The next big one will have to do something different - offer more and do it better.  As the Zen Buddhists say, "You can't step in the same river twice".

Any idea when www.adsforum168.com started? And how were you able to figure out total numbers of users who joined it as I don't see any "Total Number of Online Members <>" message in the website.

I'm just surprised its alexa ranking is pretty big.

Plus with no page rank available. Adsforum168 is probably less than 3 months old? But to have mroe than 60k members is unbelievable. Again, how did you figure that out?

Sam

I don't know - that site doesn't look all that special - just a basic Dolphin install.   I do know that a large number of users doesn't necessarily indicate success.  There are certain kinds of sites where people will just register if it is free.  This is true in international trade sites, where you can get hugh numbers of users from Asia very quickly- but it doesn't mean you have a good site or a good business model.

Oks how did you figure out its got 64,000 users?

Thanks!

Sam

Caltrade,

You got a huge list of members ah--> http://caltrade.com

Kudos!

Sam

 I just posted my site url so as to give the you an idea how a dolphin community site runs and for you to see  things that might help in a way.  you have also posted  about forcing photo during sign up, fortunately I do have that feature and replied I can be of help, bout the alexa well I have nothing to do with their report the only thing correct was my 3 months of existence which is not even accurate in the case of dolphin, I have used drupal for 2 months then swithced to dolphin. Now,long as dolphin is concerned make it almost a month (even my thumbnail in alexa is still my drupal based site).

I was wrong  posting my url address here if it gave you the impression such as you guys have mentioned.

just wanting to help in my small way. regrettably...

If you develop a site that caters to a niche market you will be on the right track. If you are going to open a run-of-the-mill dating site...why would anyone choose your site over other mainstream dating sites? It is a matter of asking the right marketing questions and developing a niche market.

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Anyone can open a business, but will the customers come? What are you truly offering them that is different than they can get elsewhere on the net?

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Food for thought...

_

~~L

Sammie - I came up with that number by going to the members page, counting the number of pages, and then multiplying that by 30 - I guess my methodology was wrong.

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Samdel - no, I don't have a huge number of users - only about 40 now I think.  I am slowly transfering my my members base from an old system I had built at http://network.caltrade.com - I will be lucky if 100 of them are still active.

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Lorren - I agree, it would be extremely tough to start a mainstream dating site unless you found some angle or niche.  The reason: they already have the members and people want as many people as possible in those kind of sites.

I think the paradigm of the current thought process is thinking of Dolphin as strictly a dating or community software.  I am working right now on using as a business model for businesses that have say dealers or employees remote or spread over large areas.  Everything a business needs is wrappped up in one package here.  Training through videos, sharing thoughts and ideas through forums, the list goes on, even exchanging products and ideas between vendors and dealers.  I also agree with the thoughts on niche marketing the sites, communities, dating, adult chat is a dime a dozen, what will make yours stand out?  I am sure there are other uses for the abilities that Dolphin provides as well, think outside the box and good luck.

Goodness, someone has some time on her hands.  It was mentioned here as one of the largest sites, and I thought the 375 was the number of pages, and yes I know that adds up to 11,000 not 64,000.  I already posted that I was wrong.  What else do you want.