THIS THREAD IS A NEW UPDATED VERSION OF A DISCUSSION STARTED HERE AT BOONEX IN 2009

Biggest and Successful Dolphin Sites  (2012)

Please add details of the most biggest and successful Dolphin sites you either own or know about to-date.

Please do not add sites that cannot be viewed / is not online currently.

Here other people can see what Dolphin sites are doing well and in-turn learn from them >>>

Website; SocialMunch.com

i haven't seen a SUCCESSFUL DOLPHIN site.

 please define "successful" ?? .. cause i do quite well. and usu has been kicking ass since 2009

Just so I understand this correctly... you started a thread about the most successful Dolphin sites of 2012 just to tell us how awesome your site is?

Are you trying to sell it or something?

is having  5k+ members registered on your site and only 5 - 10 members are online at the same time a success to you ?... lol
for me a successful site would be with at least 1000+ members online at any give time, site activity is for me success not the registered number of users.

In my book success is $$$.... PR, number of users and Alexia rank don't mean anything if you aren't bringing in big bucks.

Just to highlight you will NEVER EARN BIG $$$'s without having a strong web presence and without great ranking / traffic ranking full stop. When you are ranked among the best sites and get thousands and thousands of hits a month etc you can possibly make BIG $$$'s .... When you get Millions of visitors, members per month you are sure to earn BIG $$$'s

If you don't get noticed your just a small fish in a big internet sea no matter what you offer!

 That thread was started by someone who ran an online anti-fraud company. He had made an anti-fraud mod and was looking for a list of sites to market to.

 humm this original post vanished while editing ...

This thread is for people to share their sites and stories of success using Dolphin to-date. It is also for people to tell about the Dolphin sites they know about that have done well and continue to do well.

I have seen many people talking about other sites not being around after the first year and, or loosing faith with their own sites discovering it's far harder work then realized with issues and to get members, traffic or similar etc.

I was happy to see this thread where users are asking about the sites that have done well .... HERE

I was also surprised to see a lot of named sites are no longer around or not with Dolphin.

Yes I am very proud of my site and my achievements to-date with it. I am happy to share information's about this with others that may be interested. Yes I have done it all by myself. NO I am not interested in selling whatsoever and I in-fact have intentions to make it stand along side the top Dolphin based websites.

Do I think I have the best site ..... I'm not sure!  Am I interested to know about other awesome sites and stories ... Certainly!

What do I mean by 'Successful' ;

1) Sites that have been around longer that one year and is still active online.

2) Sites that have a large active community and continue to grow daily.

3) Sites that have a strong search engine presence and receive large/growing amounts of quality traffic.

You cannot judge how well someone is doing by the number of members online !

Viewers can enjoy my network without having to join and some days I have had nearly 9000 unique visitors.

Also some days I have no more than 10 members on at anyone time and other days I have had 200+ online at anyone time!

That thread was started by someone who ran an online anti-fraud company. He had made an anti-fraud mod and was looking for a list of sites to market to.

 I see that ... I also saw this there;

I think this is very interesting and this thread is to cater for that!!

As originally stated, people can share about Dolphin sites doing great, People at Boonex can see what Dolphin sites are doing well and in-turn learn from them.

 Ok, I just wanted to make sure you understood that other thread was started by someone who was basically a spammer who was creating a marketing list. His statement you quoted below wasn't factual because he DIDN'T have a Dolphin site.

Most people don't post their sites openly on this forum because it's just another source for spammers to pick them up. Also (as Nathan has mentioned before) most of the larger site owners don't visit this site.

I would hazzard a guess and say you and Tussery are the only two people here who claim to have successful sites.

Well I do visit this site (Boonex) and I am a large website owner.that is getting bigger.

I do not have a issue with spammers at my network as we actively prevent & fight against them.

Only quality contents are accepted and made public at my network!

Even though the battle with spammers go's on  everyday, I also have systems in place which prevent them in their pace. Failing this I have 'Live Moderators' (unpaid) which actively watch over things also.

Also I do not claim anything ...

I have proven my network/site success to-date for all to see and I welcome anyone to try and prove me wrong !

Others here can learn and be educated from all this that with the right set-up and efforts they to can do very well :)

Regards, Josh

detective i emailed you my banner for the link exchange now im waiting on your, sir.

I said MOST don't visit this site, not all.

 Deffinition of claim: To assert or maintain as a fact.  To state to be true.

Again, no one is arguing with you. You have the biggest and best site in Boonex history, we get it.

 sorry I took your comment wrong. i.e i'm making claims about my network  with no real backup!

I did not start this thread to say I have the 'Best Dolphin Site' in Boonex history however if this is the case I certainly welcome the 'Title' :)

I just wanted to see what sites people named and to see some real dolphin sites doing well ....

If myself and Tussery do indeed have the most successful sites here at Boonex then I hope others and newbies etc can learn from us in some way and re-gain faith that sites using Dolphin can do very well if done right.

Regards, Josh @ SocialMunch

I'm not too worried about spammers.  My site was getting thousands and thousand of spam posts a day until I decided to charge $1 for a Gold Membership level.  Now Gold Membership is required to do anything on my site.  I don't care anymore how many members I get, only about how much I make.  I still try to keep the site clean and flowing smoothly, but when you make money off your ads you don't mind if some of your potential members leave by clicking on these ads.

I was making about $2,500 - $2,800/month from Adsense until they booted me a second time and refused to consider my appeal.  

Google's decision forced me to look into other ways of making money.  I'm now using adult ads on my site, along with adultfriendfinder affiliate ads.  I made over $2,900 in April (last month).  I didn't want to put adult ads on my site, but Google really gave me no choice.  I was kinda forced to become an "adult site".  

Am I bragging?  Maybe I'll end up regretting this post, but I can't really talk to people at work about my site (cause I'm a high school teacher), and my friends and family really don't know a thing about running a website (nor do they care one bit).  Who else am I gonna talk to about it?

Anyhow, perhaps this post will serve to motivate some of you to keep going with your sites.  There is money out there to be made!!!  When I think about how much money sites like adultfriendfinder make, I can't help from thinking: "Why not me?"

 very good earnings I see and nice to hear you are also doing great.

I know Google can be hard with conditions etc..

Yeah right.  Nearly 14,000 members and no one online.

I am questioning the success of a site with no online members.  Getting 14K sign-ups is nothing when the return amount looks to be zero.  Still, wish the best of luck with this venture.

humm I see my working on servers currently is given you wrong impression....

User are off my site and my server is offline while work is being done today.

I said before that its not possible to judge a site by members online!  

"You cannot judge how well someone is doing by the number of members online !

Viewers can enjoy my network without having to join and some days I have had nearly 9000 unique visitors.

Also some days I have no more than 10 members on at anyone time and other days I have had 200+ online at anyone time!"

if you want to include my quality traffic which is infact  35,000 - 50,000 uniques everymonth and growing then YES i do say my site is successful and over 50,000 people on a average month enjoy the things we offer .....

Look at my stats ... NOT SUCCESSFUL COMPARED TO MANY OTHER DOLPHIN SITES ?!   Hummm I disagree

Since I originally started this yesterday my world traffic rank was 400K   and now is 378K

I have a SUPER ACTIVE network

Josh, after a couple years here, I've learned a certain few members do not like it when others

blow thier own gurtuganflugan, especially if your doing well.

This could not have been said better,

"Viewers can enjoy my network without having to join and some days I have had nearly 9000 unique visitors."

That is my goal on a couple sites. I've said it before, I could care less about memberships, click my ads...

75% of my search hits are from the facebook events I continually update and add to my local city site.  

Hey Newton, Thanks for your support.....

Well I'm not just talking the talk but I also provide proof to back up my claims etc and I Honestly hope I can give others a Little  more faith in Dolphin Based websites and, or even educate them in some way

site is online again for past  5 min, already several chatters online ... and counting 50+ live visitors !

not bad I say :)

 HL, have you gone "live" yet?

Been a while now..

I would very much like to know what succesul sites is out there.

Doesn't matter how succesful the poster's site is.

Let's review something without anyone getting mad or taking it the wrong way..

What is Reach?  (Alexa Reach)

Reach measures the number of users. Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. So, for example, if a site like yahoo.com has a reach of 28%, this means that of all global Internet users measured by Alexa, 28% of them visit yahoo.com. Alexa's one-week and three-month average reach are measures of daily reach, averaged over the specified time period. The three-month change is determined by comparing a site's current reach with its values from three months ago.

duvallocals.info AKA "Jacksonville Webcams" Alexa Reach: 6.0E-5% (Percent of global Internet users) 

ustillup.com Alexa Reach: 0.00065% (Percent of global Internet users)

socialmunch.com Alexa Reach: 0.00039% (Percent of global Internet users)

Now these are meant for comparison only..

 well i am not "bragging" in any way.. i happen to like this post not to boast but more to see who is getting alot of traffic and swapping ideas with others who care about running a "successful" site!

you are kinda right PR and rank mean nothing, it is the end of the month revenue that matters and i would compare my total profit amounts with you sir whenever you would like.

your "members online" comment and "total members" means nothing,, my site is fully open and so are my chats so to use my site or see my ads you dont have to be a member.. members dont equal traffic on my site

but what members do equal is a email list that i can mail notifications about site changes to, and have traffic spike.. which is what i do when things get slow ;)

to sum it all up in short, i see a "successful site" as one that makes the owner money,, and by that theory i had a successful site that i am quite happy with

not sure if it is jealousy, or just plain bitterness that causes you to play the wet blanket role, but i wish you the very best, cause im just that kind of guy :D

 Traffic Means EVERYTHING :)

No site will ever earn a penny unless they are able to get traffic ....

You will never get traffic unless you give people what they want (things they look for online) and  unless SEO and other important things are done right

 DEFO NO $$$$'s if people don't know you exsist whether it be via memberships or advertising !

If anyone here is doing GREAT they deserve to Boast  !!  WHY NOT ??

We work hard enough at what we do to make our sites what they are ...

To many people Fail and, or cannot make things work for them and give up

Newbies, those looking inspiration and similar can see that we have all had hard moments, and for us that have been fighting on, its starting to pay off .

Regards, Josh

Oll korrect.

 well as long  as my site covers my house payment and car note ill label it a "success"    ;)

I found another interesting website tool for traffic comparison, side by side stats for up to five websites in one single report.

http://attentionmeter.com

have fun 

when i first decided to open a site up for chat/dating.. i look at many options,, when i came here there was 2 sites that i looked at that made me decide to go with dolphin,, ustillup and that atin2.com at the time they both looked like site i wouldnt mind having,, i seen jason had the member count and the traffic and i liked some of the things i seen on the other one.. so i pretty much stole ideas from both of them and put together what i have now,, but when i see someone in the forums here saying "i have never seen a successful dolphin site" i just wonder what that person is even doing here then, other then scaring off new people who might conciser doing a site but see things like that and just say never mind

 that person has been in this neighborhood for sometimes now, helped others. And no i have never seen a successful dolphin site. I have/had a site with little over 3k members and at least 200+ online at any given time, with a PR 5 did i see that site as successful ? NO.

 well well well mr "glass half empty"  ..   success is all in the eyes of the beholder, and i dont remember any of us claiming to be the next zuckerberg  ...  you always hear people talk about to be the "next facebook" hell i just wanna be a big as zoosk one day and ill be happy 

Facebook (even though they have many great services) is more about the people you already know ...

SocialMunch is about discovering and networking with new people & friends, self-expression,  social discovery & business etc..

Many people that visit our network assume we are like a dating site (even though you can clearly see we are not)  and when they realize how clean we are they don't like it one bit. HOWEVER, we have even more people that are delighted to find a site that is like what we provide.

I think that's what makes us unique in a way ...

Heh, I ran a search and found a bunch of spam links for Detective08's site.  Guess that's one way to get exposure.

@dbagger: If you signed up to cause problems, expect a permanent vacation.

wow, the ego's here.

no doubt that is another member creating another account to degrade someone they are obviously jealous of.. lol

 Spam Links ....?!

umm the two none-shown post was interesting.

Personally I don't really touch other forums and if other people talk about our site and other people don't like it then .... well that's not our problem!

I take it the posts is of a jelious act and if anyone thinks my site has not been attacked before then they are wrong! As a result we adjusted with improved security.

GUESS WHAT HATERS !  YOU WILL ONLY BE HEARING MORE ABOUT US AS WE CONTINUE TO GROW PRESENCE AND REACH ... PLEASE GET OVER IT!

Contents, Social Exposure and Great seo COULD BE the reason and WILL BE the reason people hear a lot and will continue to hear a lot more about SocialMunch.

Josh,

Didn't I tell you so....

We get most mass exposure for our contents and keyword results across Google and other engines.

For example the story about death of 'Goober' some days ago....

SocialMunch released a story about it >> Millions of people searched the story on the web >> where was SocialMunch.com ???

I tell you ... We was on page one of Google getting all the attention, in-fact 4th in the entire world above 380,000 other news results !

Google search 'Goober Dead After Illness' and other keyword/search combinations and we rank 4th in the Entire world or similar and above some of the most biggest leading sites around to-date !

Its the same case for 70% of all our contents we release and we rank page one of Google for hundreds/thousands of topics, stories, keywords and similar.

I can take being knocked back a million times but the results stand as they are ...

Am I worried or Bothered ?  AM I HECK

Will I have a leading network ? YES I WILL

I may have people that don't like me or my site here, BUT..... I also have my supporters, some great friends and some followers :)

 i always wanted to ask,, do you have a site?

 Should I go on .... ?

I forgot to mention that there are also other factors / things that help with my traffic (not a lot but does help) and that is my networks 4 - 5 different Facebook Apps of different services at my site, FB Pages, Youtube Partnership and Channels including other similar things ...

I do have to say that building fan bases/followers cross other networks and sharing / social bookmaking quality contents is my networks biggest traffic driver apart from the seo

Your site address is being posted on all sorts of random stuff like forum posts and videos.

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=socialmunch.com 

Nathan this is NOT SPAM !!!

This is networks and social bookmarking sites that socialmunch is apart of !!

Also thousands of people a month share our contents / there fav links to the sites they are on!

PLEASE ALSO LOOK AT THE FOLLOWING COMMENT I MADE IN PREVIOUS POST;

"Youtube Partnership and Channels including other similar things ...

I do have to say that building fan bases/followers cross other networks and sharing / social bookmaking quality contents is my networks biggest traffic driver apart from the seo"

Social Bookmarking is about sharing quality contents and stories across the web and that's what people do everyday  !!

Am I one of the only people that understands about this stuff here  or what ?!

CRAZY !!!!

ALSO KNOW AS QUALITY BACKLINKS

Very powerful and important for any site wanting to be successful !!!   When users find pages they like they share it with other social bookmarking sites and similar and in return webmasters benefit ....

YEAH AWESOME WAY TO GET EXPOSURE Nathan ... going back to your following comment; "Heh, I ran a search and found a bunch of spam links for Detective08's site.  Guess that's one way to get exposure."

SocialMunch is lucky to have nearly quarter of a million links leading back to us Google shows!

Used to have some sites.  Good ol' days.  Now I build and help fix Dolphin sites instead.

NO OFFENSE BUT I MUST SAY I CAN SEE WHY MANY OTHER PEOPLE DON'T DO TO WELL WITH THEIR SITES HERE ....

MOST DON'T HAVE A CLUE, DON'T CARE TO  UNDERSTAND or RECEIVE CRAP INFORMATION'S FROM OTHERS WHO ALSO DON'T HAVE A CLUE!!

BLIND LEADING THE BLIND .....

YET SOMEONE WHO CAN BE LEARNED FROM AND HAS SHOWN TRUE AND REAL RESULTS GETS EATEN ALIVE ?!

anyone else care to sling mud   ??

I'm sure someone here is waiting for their chance !!

 I think you should stick to 'Fixing Sites'

SEO or knowledge of gaining web popularity is not your strong point I see ... 

Please don't judge/make stupid comments about my network when you honestly don't have a clue !

Nothing Personal.

Oh, understood, and thanks for the tip!

just to throw a blanket over this monster. there are many sucessful dolphin sites. most are owned by people who have hired capable developers and designers, and the site owner never or rarely comes to this site because there site is sucessful.

however success can be measured in several different variables. i can tell you that unique visitors is not truly a measure of success. there is more to the metrics than just the visit, because bots are counted as a visit, thus meaning nothing.

most oft success is measured monetarily, what is your ROI, or what actual attribute does the site present. 

we are not only talking about dolphin here, this encompasses all CMS or Static sites. 

the other reason you are not going to get sucessful site owners to post there URL in here is that this site is a spam bot magnet, so posting your domain will instantly get an increase of the chinese visitors looking to share their ugg boot sites. 

I have to correct you...

All my Google and Analytics results are NOT BOTS but rather QUALITY UNIQUE TRAFFIC

This is mainly due to the hundreds of Page 1 Google Results we have ....

We only have these results due to SEO understanding and Quality Contents.

Analytics only records real visitors NOT BOTS !!!!....   I have ONLY shown Google captured results the entire time here at Boonex to show people I know my stuff .......!

"One of the many great things about Google Analytics is that it does NOT include bots. So you can rest assured that the visitors you're seeing are, in fact, real visitors.

(This is different from many other stats programs that do show bots as visitors.)"

EVEN GOOGLE CONFIRMS THE ABOVE !

MY TRAFFIC IS HUGE AND QUALITY..... NO BOTS THANKS BUT REAL RESULTS

 I welcome anyone else to to check and confirm  how Analytics with Google work ?!

that is all fine and well, but without conversions, --> visits to memberships, its still pointless to lay your faith in what google says. i will take a moment to review your point about a bot vs a person. google is not god, and cannot know that every IP belongs to a bot (automated program) or joe blow in kalamazoo. 

so though you seem to be self-impressed with your visit results, what is your membership base? 

 Please read all of above !  I have explained all.

 Very top posts in particular ...!

I have a AWESOME members base for a VERY YOUNG site (16 months currently)

14,000 + currently

HOWEVER.... I would like to remind you all of this that I stated before;

Its not possible to judge a site by members online OR members base !

Viewers can enjoy my network without having to join and some days I have had nearly 9000 unique visitors.

Also some days I have no more than 10 members on at anyone time and other days I have had 200+ online at anyone time!"

if you want to include my quality traffic which is infact  35,000 - 50,000 uniques everymonth and growing then YES i do say my site is successful and over 50,000 people on a average month enjoy the things we offer .....

Alexa is also not 100% accurate but it measures websites across the world and m personal results puts my network withing the WORLDS top 350,000 sites ....

This is dropping daily  but thousands of results.  The Lowest numbers being the VERY BEST sites in the  world

 google dont check by ip addresses they check with cache and cookies and host names, its why you cant use a proxy and click your own ads without getting caught,, if google says it is unique the 9 times out of ten it is

 ALSO ..... Im not self-impressed!

I know what I am talking about and that's a BIG DIFFERENCE !

FORGET MY TRAFFIC RESULTS .....

LOOK AT MY SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS I HAVE HIGHLIGHTED MANY TIMES HERE !

SocialMunch is lucky to have 70% of all our contents we release  rank page one of Google for hundreds / thousands of topics, stories, keywords and similar WITHIN HOURS SOMETIMES of my network releasing such contents. We also hold this positions long after and above THE WORLDS BEST SITES !

THIS ALONE IS THE SUCCESS ALL WEBMASTERS DREAM OF FULL STOP !!

GOOGLE IS A GOD  & THEY DECIDE EVERYDAY WHAT SITES GO WHERE AND WHAT SITES DESERVES TO BE SHOWN AS THE MOST RECOMMENDED / GETS BEST  POSITIONS IN THE WORLD SEARCH RESULTS ETC FOR ANY SERVICE, TOPIC OR STORY ETC ........... !   

Google does a great job (even though I have had issues with them also) to ensure they are the best at what they do ....

When you have Google in your hands it's a awesome thing  :)

Ive built successful sites that are not massive in user base, but still earn good money.

Members dont always = revenue, whereas quality content does. 

Some of the 'big' sites Ive seen have been very lacking in content. They may bring in a quick sale, but offer little depth and return revenue.

More than one way to skin a cat as they say! (or build a Dolphin site!)

You are 100% correct  in regards to quality contents !   CONTENT IS KING !

Great contents (lots of it and regular) and great SEO for pages and contents is exactly what makes most of the worlds successful sites online SUCCESSFUL.

     ok,, last post then i am done with this topic, just gonna do this for the new people that open sites and come fishing for knowledge. I opened my site with a vision and set goals for myself along the way. Now im sure we all know that 99 percet of "social networks" that are opening now or have opened in the past couple of years are opened by people who saw the movie The Social Network and said "thats it, im gonna be the next facebook, im gonna be worth billions" . those are normally the 85 percent of boonex site owners that close within the first 2 months. Every time i heard the words "the next facebook" i want to punch babies and kick puppies!

   I opened my site for entertainment and freedom based chat, where you can say what you want and grown people can talk to one another, i set an age limit of over 18 not cause i have an ADULT site, but cause i have a site FOR adults. i sleep better at night knowing that even though my site dont have porn on it, i also did my best to prevent some child from being cybered up by so freaked out pedo. I wanted a safe place for people to enjoy and speak as they wished. A chat heavy site, but that also offered a little more.

  Now far as being "successful" i never started out my site to make a profit, from day one i just was looking for it paying for itself one day. I went through the same growing pains as any other site owner who has grown to regular traffic,, i  had my shared server suspended do to overloading the first week i was up. i was on a cloud at host for web that crashed last year and lost me 600 members, which is alot when you are less then 3 months old. i went from shared to vps to dedicated to top dedicated  back to lower dedicated, just like everyone who has grown has. I gave myself a year to iron out all the bugs, and believe me there was many, i pour dollar after dollar into the site and can admit there was times i was ready to throw in the towel. I am glad to say i stuck with it and today my site turns a small profit... profit that pretty much always goes back into mods or better servers or fancier chatrooms blah blah blah

 Point is i feel my site is what one can call successful cause i made it past those shaky months, i have regular traffic, my site is chat heavy and it is very rare now if you ever find an empty room and it is still growing, summer months are slow for chat due to people having lives but that just gives me time to plan for promotion in the fall. The site pays for itself and will do so as long as i dont get lazy.

  I never set out to have a Million dollar site over night, My goal was always a regular site with regular steady traffic, thats what i wanted, that what i worked for, and thats where i am today..IT WONT COME CHEAP! i seen many people see the less then 10 dollar a month shared servers and the "FREE SOFTWARE" and things like that and think "wow i can have one of those site like that for 5 bucks a month..  NO!!.. YOU CANT! WONT HAPPEN!.. be ready to drop money after money on server upgrades,  site options, and traffic. If you buy traffic, you will need to buy options to keep that traffic happy, traffic + options = SERVER COST. to be honest you prolly wont see a true PROFIT in less then a year, and then it will be small once you subtract total investment... you wont make millons over night, heck i know plenty of steady traffic sites that make less the hundred dollars a month after being open for 3 plus years.

 im not the biggest, im not the MOST SUCCESSFUL.. but as far as what i set out to achieve, i am successful and i can say i am one of the few that made it through the growing pains of the first year of a boonex site and i do have plans on steady growth.. i live on these forums as a way to get new ideas for my site to keep my members happy, so if you come across this forum and are just starting out and have a new site and wonder how "successful" you will be with your site, you will be as successful as the work you put into it, and the goals you set for yourself.

  p.s. when i started my site PHP scared the living daylights out of me, now with help from people like pranshank and deano and other people who post lines of code in these forums i have built my confidence up to the point it is a everyday thing for me, and later this year i plan to take a stab at flash and work the bugs out of rayz chat or something.. so even if you open a site and end up closing it you might walk about with some coding knowledge you didnt have before. and to many people  knowledge is SUCCESS!

Tussery you have done very good :)

 this thread is curious, its hardly definitive what a success is, however, it must have certain elements that satisfy the objective of the site. One thing i was reading over and over,' it isn't the number of online users that indicates a success,......'

well, If a site is appealling enough to members they will be online most of the day as is the case with many 'successful' sites that are household names. If casual traffic 'visit' the site yet don't sign up, and fail to stay then that would be problematic and indicate a failure to meed the consumer / member. For me the role of this style of site is to provide a place that people 'need' to use, if a site satisfies the need then online's will reflect that, at that point I think we are reaching the purpose of the site and therefore maybe determined as successful. Contrary a site that has large numbers 'visiting' however, fails to retain them is not.

When my network release new stories and similar 8/10 times the content will hit and stay at #1 Google.

In many cases the traffic / viewers have no intentions of joining but to see what they arrived for.

Even though the above stands, 98% of them also spend a average of 3 - 10 minutes per visit and look through a further 2 - 5 web pages / contents they did not  intent on viewing (their choice).

Our actual members spend any where from 5 minutes to 5+ hours enjoying members features and communicating with each other.

I agree that membership from the traffic is awesome however, my network personally does not aim to have memberships even through is a good thing.

I don't think my success is just the traffic we achieve, BUT also how quick and how highly we rank with all our contents in search engines, how much time 'non members' spend at our network without having to join and the fact that on top of all this we have paid members that enjoy extra features that our members can enjoy.

Also, no site will ever become a house-hold name it no-one knows about it ?!

We give users what they want to know about and in-turn we get their attention. Do I  think my site is taking over the world....NO !  Do I think that many people have no idea the TRUE work and efforts it takes to take websites to the NEXT LEVEL: ... yes!

I would also like to highlight that I have shown users here at Boonex, that many contents/topics/stories I have released hours/ days before, have hit page 1 of Google  (and in some cases even #1 position in the ENTIRE world) Above some of the biggest sites /authority sites and companies on the planet like BBC news, technorati and many others  ...

I see this a very successful for a website that has been around less that 16 months. I would be impressed if anyone else here at Boonex can make claims like above !?

Examples, please.

My Network does not  have a 'Niche' like a lot of others sites (I personally believe this is a easier root for websites and narrows/reduces the efforts required)  but in-fact we cover almost everything we can think of  and our battle making in to the top is even harder.

We don't hit the top listings for just one thing or one area...... but for many many things and many different areas 

I'll take that as a "no," then. 

 coming now... hold on!

 hmm!! i think you might know that google will put the site on the top for you if you search it several times and visit it by multiple methods.

Yes, I think Google's filter bubble needs to be taken into consideration when measuring page results.

If you really want to test your page positions, search your site in a browser's private browsing 

 This is very true, google algorithms take in to consideration on what "your" searching from your home IP, I can rank # one on Google in several ways. Just because your searching for the "exact word for word" title of your "contents" they will show up #1

this is not exact but an example.. please show me wrong here. I have music on site and promote some club dj's, I don't push this or advertise.

on google dj's search for different mixes, i.e. "the roof is on fire original ultimix" a good old song..

this result is from google.co.uk

and the same search here in the US, and look at the page. I'm not signed into my google account.

Now can you show some of these examples of being number one for content other than your site name.

I would really like people in other countries to search this term and see were that song list.

Look at this result for "cam to cam chat jacksonville" and set google for "Beverly Hills, CA 90210"

Ok for the last example, from Denmark on different search.. and this is above YouTube.

for "hearts of space" gamelan

BTW the site on top of these results is one of mine..

Keep in mind that Google also uses cookies and IP addresses to filter results.  You need to clear private data and change the IP address (and remain logged-out) to help pop the bubble.

But something like "Jacksonville web cams" sounds niche enough to work (indeed, newton27's site is the second result on DuckDuckGo).  I'm questioning Detective08's claim that he's the top result on Google for top stories, even ahead in rank compared to the likes of TNYT.  Unless he's talking about local news, which wouldn't be covered.

Edit: Also haven't heard back from Detective08 on those buzzwords.  I'm thinking he didn't know about filter bubbles. 

 You notice on the photos, I am logged out. These results are the same on my mobile phone, not tied to my home IP.. and any friends house shows the same results..

SOCIALMUNCH Keyword and Positions Currently;

(only some by the way!)

free social cams - #1 entire world
free social chat - #2 entire world
social chat room - #3 entire world
social chat - #8 - 11 entire world
unlimited free video chat - #4 entire world
unlimited video chat - #3 etire world
onlinecam - #2 entire world

irishopinions - #8 entire world
what happens when you shine a laser at a plane - #2 entire world
hacking types - #8 - 10 entire world
psychic free 3 minutes - #3 entire world
$50 gigs -  #2 entire world
cannabis culture 420 - #5 entire world
free $10 music - #2 entire world

sperm bank different races - #6 entire world
sperm bank mix-up different races #3 entire world
payday max ltd - #3 - 5 entire world
things do at a boring party - #6 entire world

John Travolta Charged With Second Sexual Battery Claim - #1 - #2 enite world.
john travolta charged - #3 Entire WOrld.

Toddler Secretly Rides Bike 3 Miles - #2 entire world
Toddler Rides Bike 3 Miles - #3 entire world

Pineapple Mint Julep Recipe - #3 entire world

Drum Major's Death - FAMU Hazing Case #5 - 7 entire world
Different Types of Taser Guns - #5 - 7 entire world

discount advances - #5 - 8 entire world

gang signs and symbols - #4 entire world
popular challenges - #4 entire world
easter games for adults - #6 - 10 entire world


Above are different keywords used and some of our current Google Positions. As you can see the results cover, topics, news, business, entertainment and similar.

I could sit here for weeks collecting all the information's up however this is a small sample!

Each keywords have HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of results (EVEN MILLIONS) and my network still ranks above them holding some of the best strongest positions.

The 'John Travolta' news stories are only days / week old however this and infact most of our stories beat the BIGGEST names around as far as search positions!

This month SocialMunch.com was found via 17,465 different queries across Google with each different query being search thousands/millions of times.

my results are NOT tied to particular locations or  things (niche etc) but in-fact covers many different things, services, thousands of topics and stories and many other things!  We also Attract the WORLD !

ABOVE WAS JUST A 'SMALL' SAMPLE BEFORE ANYONE TRY'S TO CHUCK MUD IN MY FACE  !!

IF IM REALLY REQUIRED TO COLLECT MY HUNDREDS OR EVEN THOUSANDS OF RESULTS TO MAKE MY POINT MORE CLEAR THEN SO BE IT ....

DO YOU ALL REALLY THINK I WOULD SIT HERE DOING ALL THIS JUST TO LOOK A FOOL ?!   NOPE NO WAY :)

I see the John Travolta one is from a headline of a Digg submission with no exposure on that site (two Diggs, no comments).  Let's change the terms to something like "john travolta sexual battery" and search Google again.  Your site is nowhere to be found.

Very true Josh, your ranked high. Hope it last long, how do you stand up on Bing?

I know I don't search for things like, "Drum Major's Death - FAMU Hazing Case"

a real world search would be "drum majors death" your not on the list, google or bing.

again, your using a search term that exactly matches your article/news title, of course your going to be high up, or number one.

 socialmunch pages;

john travolta charged 3rd - 4th in world !

John Travolta Charged With Second Sexual Battery Claim - 2nd - 4th in world

I didnt say I come top for every keyword on the planet!  tut .....  

Yes we social bookmark alot like I have said before ... however all this things I have listed are ACTUAL SOCIALMUNCH PAGE LISTINGS !!

 Yes i get your point newton but many  thousands of other people do and or 'combinations' of kewords etc.

some things are top listed with just a few words and others more....

What about this one; 'john travolta charged' - #3 Entire World.

this is a AMAZINGLY STRONG KEYWORD WITH THE VERY BEST RESULT !!

As newton27 said, you're searching for results that match your submission.  That doesn't mean anything, because Google will match terms to an exact page title.  And to be honest, who's going to search for those exact words?  You need to penetrate the common terms, like I showed above.

Getting into the social media craze is great, but having a bunch of Digg submissions with no Diggs or comments isn't a success.  You're flooding the Internet with links to socialmunch.com, but most of it seems to be low-level social bookmarks and random links on videos.

if I was to go through all my articles, contents and similar at my network and research all organic keywords and combinations of say 2 - 4 keywords socialmunch.com will be from top #1 position page one of Google (top google) to page 3 of Google search engines. i.e we dominate thousands of keyword phrases

 your talking about a few NEWS STORIES !!    what about the rest ??

Also thats kinda the IDEA !! You make it the strongest as possible for SEO in titles and similar knowing people will be searching for these things ....

I was questioning those news stories.  I don't care about the other results (which are also the effects of the filter bubble, most of those terms don't have you listed on the first page), but congratulations on at least some level of penetration.

Josh, your on top now. Congratulations, cheers.

You would be surprised to know, the biggest D sites will never been seen here or talked about.

I would go to say 80% of successful sites are adult. I know I have three. Non can be found on google, bing, or duckduckgo.

I do know I make good money on my ads and memberships on those site, which I will never share.

I have worked on several adult sites that have many, many members that are all paying members.

Another thing to remember, your site is new, and you will be popular for a while on google.

Let's revisit this topic in one year and see how well things are going.

Good luck to all you guys.

Next topic...

 thats interesting as its Google Analytics / and webmasters tools  that have pointed out most of the results...

I just check a few out ..

 this started as a thread of interest and to maybe allow others including myself show off a little ... I am proud of my site as you know.

This quickly turned in to a competitive situation !

I suspect there are even bigger sites using Dolphin and that they may never attend Boonex...

Nice to see there are also several sites also making it to the top gradually and its not people with £££'s to waist or with big teams behind them.

Yup I think another review in 2013 will be awesome

Detective08, to obtain one of the Biggest and Successful Dolphin Sites (2012), did you use any of the SEO modules offered on the BoonEx Market?  And if so... is there one particular mod worth the $$$ and time investment?  I do have basic SEO knowledge/skills... I've SEO'd several sites over the last 10 years but never a Dolphin site.  I had considered adding basic SEO components to my Dolphin site, i.e. improved page <Title> info, customized Meta info, Google analytic code, etc.

 Hello ....

Sure, I actually recommend this following SEO tool here at Boonex; http://www.boonex.com/m/seo-head-manager-d7

I have always used this to make all pages, contents and services as strong as possible for search results etc.

Using this and 'clever' keyword use will certainly help any site further as far as SEO optimization.

I hope this helps you and good luck :)

Josh

I'm not sure if I do have one of the 'Biggest and Successful sites' in this current 2012 however I know I have worked hard enough and learned a lot that has helped me and got my site where it is to-date!

Not only this but I am also trying to help others and share what I know and have learned....

If SocialMunch.com is among the 'Top Sites' then I am very happy and maybe 'Boonex' could use SocialMunch as an example to those who feel its not possible to make their site successful in some way!

I don't think there will be many more dolphin based sites that have done much better personally and if there are then users here can be sure to quickly see my network standing along side them.

hi Josh, thank you for your suggestion... I checked it out... it has some nice features but I've decided to use deano's Head Injections.  It's capable of customizing page <title> & <meta> tags... and for less than half the price.  Plus deano's module has a Support Forum... and he has an excellent reputation for maintaining his modules.  I've learned from recent "Dolphin" experiences that a module Support Forum, especially when it's on the BoonEx site, is a very important tool for clients to ask questions, request fixes and share information. It's also a good place to review the module before buying it... to remove all doubt that the mod works as advertised and will be supported.

 I agree, Deano is 'Ace' and if the module is as good as the one I suggest then great stuff :)

Josh

http://www.reddit.com/search?q=socialmunch.com

Seems the reddit and Digg submissions didn't work so well.

 Nathan what is your point ?

You are showing social bookmarking posts from either myself or people who have shared my contents across networks like reddit.

Reddit has people vote on contents/stories if your lucky enough to get noticed

Digg votes are based on the people that follow you liking your stories.

Whether my or other peoples submissions failed or was voted at these other networks is besides the point! 

 Do you not know about social bookmarking and that billions of people do this everyday including website owners ?

it helps get you noticed !

 That link shows one post by you a year ago and then 5 reports of your post being spam. I think his point was spamming reddit didn't seem to work.

The point is all that social media exposure and everything else being touted is nothing but spamming.

You're spamming reddit (horribly, that's not how one uses reddit), Digg, and YouTube.  I search for the URL on other sites and see tons of posts by one or two users (who are obvious sock puppets).  You cite meaningless term rankings and fail to understand how Google handles showing results to people.  I also wonder how many hits are recurring, and not from bots.

Edit: About the reddit link, it shows nothing.  Do a domain search on reddit for socialmunch.com and see an entire subreddit made to spam links to his site (all with two upvotes and little to no comments).  But no, it's not working.

yup I agree the reddit thing dont look good and I don't believe my site is the only one there with a bad name.

Infact I did have my own sub-reddits dedicated to sharing socialmunch things and obviously it was a bad move at the time!

HAS REDDIT GIVEN ME TOP KEYWORD RANKINGS ?!   UMMMM NO

DOES REDDIT SEND ME LOADS OF TRAFFIC ?!     OBVIOUSLY NOT SEEMS THEY DON'T LIKE MY SITE THERE

We have also gone over the point that Google Analytics only shows real traffic (stats = blue for new traffic and green for returning). Google does not record bots.

the thing with Reddit is quirky stories and similar work .... I didnt understand this to well at first ....

I HAVE DIGG AND REDDIT SHARE BUTTONS ON EVERY PAGE AT MY SITE .... other people like to submit things / my contents so what can I say !!

Still my site is in a good position from hard work and seo end of!

Where is recurring traffic shown?  I don't see a green graph on here (I might have become color blind after watching that double rainbow video).

if you google +1 your site, it always comes up with your site in the first spot, i do know that happens

screenshow shows that this month so far 18.20% was returning visitors

23,799 visitors of which 19,887 was unique

People look a average of 3 - 4 pages per visit and around 4.00 minutes per time at the site.

Like I said many times also, members are cool but its not what I really aim for ... besides all this I still make  top rankings and listings as shown before...

I aim to generate traffic with good contents, ranking  and seo and thats what I will continue doing while generating members along the way whether they be in large numbers or not.

 you are correct about this :) and its awesome if other people that find sites do it also ....

However my results with search listings and not  due to Google+

Anyone can try the keywords and see where we come up ...

Your screenshot is tough to make out.  Please post a clear image.

This is the last time I will be doing this !   I have better things to do and to get done ....

I have proved and shown all about my network ...  My search engine listings and rankings are down to two (2) reasons and ONLY two reasons and that is 1) Good regular contents 2) Good SEO

YOU CAN'T CALL 'NATURAL' SEARCH ENGINE LISTINGS WITH TOP POSITIONS fake or bots no matter how you want to try and dress it up ?!   This is true success and businesses around the world pay hundreds of thousands in £££'s per month for advertising and similar things to even get to page #1 of Google or see Results.

The 2 above reasons are also the reason we attract a lot of new traffic.  ALSO viewers of our contents dont really need to come back twice unless they are interested in our others contents or services...

Also this month (past 13 days) my site has managed to get many members =  1310 this month

with 43 today so far.

Have you ever wondered why those 10,000 "people" from non English speaking countries registered on your site?  Does that not strike you as a bit odd?

 Who me ?

I currently have nearly 4500 USA members ...... and nearly 1300 UK members .... 400 CA members ... nearly 500 India members ... nearly 300 Australia members,  Denmark, Italy and France coming up to 200 members each ....

The rest of the members seems fairly spread across all other countries and totally normal for a site 16 month in age and with such natural high rankings.... !

NO NOT ODD AT ALL ACTUALLY....

I FIND IT ODD THAT PEOPLE WITH SITES THAT HAVE NOT DONE WELL AT ALL CAN TRY AND BE-LITTLE A SITE THAT IS FAR MORE SUCCESSFUL THEN THEY ARE CAPABLE OF?!

My site has a  google PR of 3 and a Alexa global rank of 1,038,878.

I have not setup google analytics, so i really don't know the rest of the stats. Guess maybe i will do that for curiosities sake.

Hi Detective... heck knows why you are getting a bashing on here...... Thanks to your advice and that of newton27 i have managed to start to get my own seo sorted out after 2 years..... Thanks guys... and I will keep results logs and track improvements as best I can....

as for success... I think if your site is meeting the origional targets and ambitions you set out when you first designed and concieved it then it could be classed as a success.....

Thanks guys...

Hey, awesome and I'm happy to have been able to help you :)

I also agree with what you say about success to the website owners if they are hitting their own goals/achievements etc....

I  guess I'm get the bashing here for me opening my mouth about my site and the hard work I put in into it, my results , and  correcting others ....!

Never mind I know there are people here who don't like my site and some here that's in-fact jealous.

I Also know  EVEN MORE people here reading this thread and comments are happy for me  ...  even accepting some ideas I suggest along the way etc :)

this thread is already 136 post long and i feel its title should be socialmunch success.

just saying.......

 after being 'called out' the way I have been by some people here at Boonex, I am thinking the Title should indeed be re-named  'SocialMunch Success'

Not for my achievements with my network .... but for managing to stand up for myself and the numerous 'stone throwing' that has been going on since I first opened my mouth ...

I would like to  Highlight  that I originally made one good post here about my site to start off something that I was interested to know and thought others would be also ...... the rest of my posts here are from sharing advice with others and myself 'proving' that I'm NOT full of sh*t  like some people have tried (and failed) to suggest !

 You dodged the question I'll ask it again.  What do you suppose those 10,000 "members", that in all likelyhood do not speak or read English, has interested them in your site?  It's a fair question that you don't seem to want to answer.  No need to get all defensive like you have been ..... I'm really just curious.

I am also interested in how all those "members" found your site.  The top keyword searches driving traffic to your site, don't seem to have much to do with content typical of a social networking site

 My comment was aimed at the people here who have tried to knock my achievements when facts are facts whatever!.

Infact almost 95% of my members speak english and we only have english contents, however I am aware many can also happily use SocialMunch using ' translators' etc.   The main interest in our news and articles which holds TOP google listings and generate thousands in visitors each month and ranked WORLD WIDE

I am lucky that a percent of these join also ...

I find this not correct in regards to queries ....  This month SocialMunch.com was found via 18,000 + different 'search queries' .... each one searched between 1 - 1000's  of times !

This has been the case for many many months ....

If you read in above comments by myself you will see 'a few' of our keywords and search ranking for many different things / services / news / articles / features blah blah

Its this that drives our traffic and includes many thousands of keywords and combinations .....

We don't just have one contents or even 100 contents...... we have thousands of QUALITY contents and this is building daily ....

We generate all different kinds of visitors of all different ages and interests.... Our members dont just join SocialMunch to chat with members but for many many other reasons also

Already in 17 days my network have nearly quarter of a million page impressions .....     We get looked at  A LOT

Since I started this THREAD my rank has gone from 400,000 to now 316,000

This I put down to all the news I have been covering and getting out before other big sites... a lot of these are also holding awesome google listings ... even news that's just days old!

ALSO...... my main traffic comes from USA, CA, UK etc .... all english speaking users ... the others I guess know english or maybe just like the look of what they see, who knows ?!

I imagine there are thousands of spammers in China, each with many aliases, that don't understand more than a few website related words (eg. join, name, email, forum, blog, comment, add, submit).  They each have a daily SPAM quote to meet in order to get paid... and they're all very happy to visit social networking sites that do very little to block them from joining.  In return the site owners get significantly larger traffic numbers to boost about... a win-win situation for those wanting it.

I would define a successful website as one that has a well thought out, effectively presented, focused purpose that persistently succeeds at generating a lot of useful content both for and from legitimate members (i.e. not spammers).  Hopefully the site also provides a useful service for it's community of members... somehow improving the quality of their lives, e.g. a site dedicated to dancing.

 I have 'few' chinese members that dont post blogs or articles EVER and enjoy the chat room where we require english lang!

I  also know alot of other dolphin sites seem to suffer with chinese spammers etc...

like I said, personally my site is most popular in the USA  and traffic is generated via quality contents that is released as the world is looking for these things for example with 'news stories'

Our 'members base' is also mainly USA following by UK, CA etc etc.....   

Profiles ~1,019,102 records
ProfilesTrack ~445,719,514 records
Messages ~36,437,288 records
Media ~11,725,221 records

 over one million profiles since 2003 ?

The database stats are for a site up since late 2007.

 Is this just a fabrication designed to get business your way? (you are, after all, a developer) or is this Genuine?

I sure hope it is genuine. If it is please share the url with us because i for one would love to see how a site with over 1m members functions, what its speed is like etc. How busy it gets, What server setup you need to run such a site. 

With that many members you should have atleast 50-100 members online at any given time? (assuming thay are active members) And I would love to see what the stress loads are like.... This is information that i have been desperate to see for a very long time.  

Nathan : )

Every once in a while, the guy pops in and claims to have the Guiness World Record Dolphin site, but has never, ever coughed up any proof.  Personally, I think he's just blowing smoke.

 like you I  am also keen to see the site ... I know how hard its been to get mine where it is currently and the server costs and everything else involved!

Awesome stuff if this is the case and congrats to the owner even...

Sorry, can't give out the URL.

Server costs run over 5K a month.

DB server config, for example, is a Dual Hex Core, with 144GB RAM, on RAID 10 8 drive 15K SAS array, pushing out about 4500 mySQL queries per second.

Web servers.  Dedicated media server.

As for trying to get business - we don't even work on Dolphin 6 or 7 at all... and perhaps will not work on Dolphin 8 either - need to see how Dolphin 8 works out. - so that is not the reason for posting this info.  If you don't believe me, email me and ask me to work on your Dolphin 6 or 7 site - and see what the answer is.  No.

you dont work on dolphin, but this site you posted figures for is a dolphin site?

The "Dolphin line"  existed prior to Dolphin 7 (CC-BY License) or Dolphin 6 (CC-BY License) that most of you are familiar with.

There was also a full Dolphin 5 (GPL License) release cycle, starting at v5.0.0 and ending in Dolphin 5.6.5.

There were also forks like "Clean" and "GPLdate", off of the Dolphin 5.x GPL releases.

Prior to that, there was aeDating 4 (Commercial License), and aeDating 3 (Commercial License) as far back as 2003, when BoonEx was known as "aeWebworks".  There may have been a v2 and v1, but that is before my time (2003) and I forget now.

The site I am speaking about is based on one of these previous versions (prior to v6 or v7), as it was launched in 2007 and heavily modified continuously since then.

wow, over 5k a month !!   I thought mine was pricey and I had an awesome server.

I take it you are pulling in some serious ££££'s

Congrats anyway if this is your own website :)

I too hope to be seeing some great numbers too in time.

 I'm curious to know if your member base was generate naturally via search engine or forced via advertising campaigns etc ?

Very little by search engine in the start.
Most of all from campaigns - but now less campaigns and more search engine.

 re:

Really?  Why not?  Is the site that perverse and creepy? 

This should explain why....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement

This thread is pretty close to worthless as far as the title is concerned, all of these claims on high membership & traffic - just to gloat?

Success is measured by what you get in return for your efforts. Anyone can create a D7 site and fill it with "members". Anyone can drive traffic to that site through useless SEO & social site manipulation. But what are you getting out of it? A bloated google analytics number? A false sense of happy & active members?

You want to impress me - give me metrics I can relate to.

How many hours does your staff put into development and maintenance each month?

What is your overall expense each month?

What are your sources of revenue, and how much does it bring in?

And finally, after all the checks and balances, what do you average for net income?

Only after all that, will I begin to care what your traffic looks like. Maybe you can't or don't want to share that level of detail, in such case I'd be happy with a percentage of net return instead of a specific dollar figure.

One of my startup sites as an example:

Expenses (includes equated man hours) $120/avg

Income: $110/avg
Sources: Adsense, paid memberships & sale of branded merchandise

Net Gain: -$10 or - 8%

By my own definition, this site is thus far unsuccessful. I have just under 2,000 REAL members. GA tells me I'll see anywhere from 3k-12k unique visits per month, this quarter trending towards the bottom as my target market is seasonal.

Am I not fully capitalizing on my member base? Probably not, but traditional adsense and other ad revenue streams are proving unsuccessul, and I have yet to find a mechanism that will make my site truly organic - meaning my members do all the work. I have found that the time & effort I personally put into the site directly correlates to the member activity - of which i've unfortunately ran out of both :(

 I smell smoke. Lots and lots of smoke.

Ive had a few D7 sites that Ive put together for customers in niche sports markets. 

Unfortunately, the owners dropped them as projects as they had the enthusiasm to update at first, but that dried up on them after a while... they each had a good run while active though.

On average, after about a year, they were on 1000+ members each.

Free membership, £10 / $15 a month premium membership which allowed access to instruction videos, event video etc... 

I would find ave 10% members would upgrade at any time so each site was pulling in £1000 a month ongoing. Not bad with a few on the go at any time! 

I had a few of these sites running just on average dedicated server. nothing huge, $160 a month and would do the job fine.

Chat room was active on one site with 40-50 people every night at the same time. Held up fine.

These were all proper active members, no fake IDs, mainly built up from social network linking.

Am building some new projects now that have much bigger scope than the smaller niche ones. 

Hopefully, will be able to come back to this post with some new figures over the summer!

Dolphin will do the job... good site build, then good advertising, then good ongoing content will feed success though! 

Long term commitment brings long term rewards!

I just launched a special community site and in the past 5 months I have a total of 465 members (approx 93 members/month), all real members, not all active all the time. As with any social site, few are active daily, some frequently, some periodically and some rarely and yes there are some that never return.

I have to admit, it takes work and dedication, not necessarily money, it is how much you promote your site, thru word of mouth or use other social sites and also the content you update that helps bring in more members. it is not a case of "you build they will come...". it is a case of 'you build it, work it, push it, content it and they will come in slowly, but they will come".

I have no fake members, do not believe in it. I am constantly on line and weed out all those spammers as soon as they register. So my site is clean without any spam material.

I say find a good niche then work on getting members, it is work yes, but if that is your dream then go do it.

I honestly think that large social sites like FB will be there, but the smaller niche ones will flourish over the next few years. I also predict that within 20 years social media will change drastically into something different or it may even die out. I find it a pain keeping up with any of it. Professional sites will probably do much better then social sites.

I find people who join social sites are more prone to leaving for the "next" thing, since they are looking for "friends", professional niche sites on the other hand if done correctly will keep their membership active since members are looking for business or knowledge connection.

My 2cents worth.

I expected nothing more from my posts then at least a few people flaming or slamming.  It is how things go on this forum at BoonEx.  It is why I seldom post here, and just lurk.  Maybe last time I posted here was a year ago.  So a longer post / reply, is due - and here it is....

I have been running a forum dedicated to Boonex / aeWebworks products since 2003.  It has 1000s of posts to verify the time-line and history of what I am talking about here in this thread.  It used to be a real community there, with community projects, mods, etc, like Clean and GPLdate, and no flaming at all (at least that I can remember).  But since Dolphin 7, I have not cared about my forum much since we don't work on Dolphin 7 or 6 anymore (as mentioned in a previous post here), due to some disagreements on the direction BoonEx took with version 6 and version 7 (like CC-BY licensing, design, and coding style).  If version 7.1 or 8 or whatever of Dolphin "does not work out", I may even take my forum down.  However, if these new releases are "game changing", then maybe my forum will be more important to me.  The jury is still out on that.

I have been a member here on BoonEx (ExpertZZZ) since 2007 and whatever they had before that (ExpertZZZ) prior to that.  I forget.

And back in 2007, when was a invited speaker at iDate 2007, my talk was titled "Sustainable Site Development for On-line Dating & Social Networking". If you listened to my talk then, you would have heard how to develop a similar site to the one I mention in this thread.  I was invited back several times again over later years to speak again at iDate, but I was unable to attend due to other responsibilities.

http://www.boonex.com/n/iDate_2010

If I am "blowing smoke", I have been doing it for at least 9 years (2003) when my forum launched or 5 years (2007) when I spoke at iDate, depending on how you look at things.

I am simply posting some general data about a big Dolphin site,  some general data about some of its operating parameters, and the general idea that the kind of things mentioned in this thread, are possible.

I am unable to give any specifics about this particular site do to non-disclosure agreements.  Sorry about that.  Not under my control.

I am however, open to worthwhile and interesting conversations within the NDA restrictions I am under.

So you can slam me, or whatever stokes your agenda.  Or we can have different, and perhaps, more useful, interaction.

 That would really be a shame. When I first got involved with Dolphin I always found answers to my questions on your forum because I could never find them on expertzzzzzzzzzzz.

I am unable to give you the specifics you ask for due to the NDA.

I can however, tell you that there is a "team" of programmers working full time on the site, dedicated to the site.  And also support staff.

I gave you an idea of the server costs in a previous post, but the cost of the programmers and support staff, I can not tell you.

Or the overall expense or revenue or net income.  Other to say that it is profitable.

Revenue sources are white-label sister sites, memberships, membership renewals, and "value added" products like PDF downloads or custom services.  All standard stuff.

However, if you want to speak about general technical details, I can perhaps expand on that some, within my restrictions.

WELL I KINDA DISAGREE WITH YOU.

I think that statistics are very important and good to share with others !!

how can you measure a site success without them ?? 

Leading websites (authority sites) of the world are only so because of their efforts and achievements with their reach, stats, numbers etc etc. it all comes down to numbers and without numbers a site is NOTHING in the INTERNET WORLD and will  not make any members base or even money

I also find it interesting to find out how other Dolphin users are doing ...

I fully expected many other people to be throwing their websites and success in to this thread however I can now see the numbers for sites that are strong are not good

I am not just gloating my own achievements in regards to traffic but WHY I GET THIS TRAFFIC IN THE FIRST PLACE !

i.e.  Natural top listings across all world search engines which I know other webmasters pay ££££££'s per month for  !!

THIS IS FOR SURE SUCCESS and rather than loosing to advertising and similar I am lucky to be where I am through hard work and seo mastering

I certainly see my own site as successful and I have not at all hold back from sharing / proving what I have said or where I stand.

I think maybe the title was wrong but it has certainly opened a lot of eyes here at boonex and other people that don't believe some sites do well can rest assured that in-fact some people do in-deed do well

 Yeah right.... [edited out]

[Andrew Boon: Look, I understand one needs to pull off a smug joke every now and then, but really, a member came in with their input, shared info, presented good reason for not giving a link, and you still have to mock them? ]

 Forgive me if you covered this detail already, but it's tough getting through the repetetive posts above without skimming a few.

Are you turning a profit? How? And at what margin?

I didn't mean to imply that traffic wasn't important, I merely meant that it equates to jack !!$@ if the financials don't stack up.

 Forgive me if you covered this detail already, but it's tough getting through the repetetive posts above without skimming a few.

Are you turning a profit? How? And at what margin?

I didn't mean to imply that traffic wasn't important, I merely meant that it equates to jack !!$@ if the financials don't stack up.

 Forgive me if you covered this detail already, but it's tough getting through the repetetive posts above without skimming a few.

Are you turning a profit? How? And at what margin?

I didn't mean to imply that traffic wasn't important, I merely meant that it equates to jack !!$@ if the financials don't stack up.

 Hello,

Well bearing in mind my network is just '17 month old' I am happy to share the following facts .....

1) Server currently cost around $300 per month

2) I have  a number of monthly paid members that pay up to $25 per month to use advanced features.

3) we currently earn anywhere from  $50 - $500 + in affiliate earnings per month (slowly growing)

4)  Google adsense draws around $300 - $800 per month - (Growing in clicks and payments)

5) some users here are aware I have been offered sponsorship by a large web hosting company and they are offering to possibly take care of all my networks hosting requirements via a 5 year agreement. (still being discussed)

6) We have another sponsor who will be paying $500.00 per month from July 2012 to have premier advertising position at my network

7) the BIGGEST Achievement for me and my network ..., We hold page # 1 google for hundreds / thousands of keywords / search phrases for chat, news, different topics, contents and similar stuff which in turn saves my network ££££££££'s + in advertising or campaigns and I have NEVER paid one cent for such

There are many other things I could sit here and brag about but above is the basic things I am happy  to share :)

I would also like to mention that I dont have a large team ... Just a small core team ....

I work day and night 24/7 just about to make my site what it is!

Earnings and other opportunities at my network are getting bigger daily.

We are not a dating site or adult site but a good quality network. i.e the members I have generally enjoy my network because we are different to any other site they have been on or are members at. Users don't join my network assuming they will meet people to date or for sex  etc

I don't treat my network as a website ... but as my BUSINESS. I say this because many people make sites without understanding the internet or users in general and think with little or no work / efforts their website will be the next big thing which is certainly not the case!

Just like a business, websites need hard work, clever thinking and forward driven actions among other important factors !

In regards to the blatant flames in this thread, flames do not build community.

Hostile environments do not encourage sharing or collaboration.

I guess I go back to "lurking" as things are the same here, a year later, since I last tried to communicate on this forum.

I'll continue to monitor the thread, for some intelligent communications, and active moderation by the moderators (posts reported)

Hi ModMySite, I understand you cant post the URL, no probs. 

Can you say though 'in general' what sort of site you have?

Is it a general social network, niche based community, local area community...

Ive always focused on niche interest groups, but am in launch stage for a country specific site at the moment, as well as a general 'chat' type network. Would be interested to know if any of the above applies to your site or if its something different?

Appreciate your reply

Tim

 Modmysite - Personally, I think you're one of the more credible members here based on history. My posts were not intended towards you.

I think this "community" is built too much around unfounded promises. The first being a 'turnkey' social platform, the second being the misconception of all you need to do is inflate said community with fake members, useless content and SEO keywords and you'll turn a profit.

It is tough for me to grasp that Detective08 is doing so well with the type of site he appears to run. This is purely based on my own speculation, but I can't see the value (to end users) in such a community. Adsense is about the only way I can see turning a profit from syndicating and regurgitating internet content.

Am I jealous? Sure, I'd love to be in his shoes & have more traffic than I know what to do with - or modmysite's for that matter. Please don't take my criticism as hasteful, critical thinking & conversation is the only way I see anyone benefiting from this discussion.

If you're one of the few with a successful community, kudos to you & your efforts - but if you want to earn any level or respect here you'll have to share (within reason) how and why your site works so well.

*Sorry about the triple post above - I am reminded again how horrible IE9 is with orca

This thread is a great example, for many, of how some people are genuinely trying to share their knowledge or find out as much as possible, while other just have to project negativity. WHY?

We build this software and this community to help people like you, create good community sites. This is all we want. Need a place to vent ? This isn't the one.

Now, regarding big sites and ModMySite's example specifically. I can vouch that over years we have come across a number of sites with big, active databases. In most cases, at some stage owners become very protective (an duly so) about the fact that they use Dolphin. They just need extra security and competitive advantage. We've also known about MMS working on some big sites long ago. We do not know the links either, though. We also worked with a number of large sites ourselves (once tuning server for 2000+ active online members), and some very profitable sites - in every case we are not able to share the link.

So, the point is, there're successful Dolphin-based sites, but the more successful they are, the harder it gets to tell if they're powered by Dolphin.

And another point is - be nice - it's good for you.

Agree with the above.

( the bits about being nice, sharing etc..!)

 Hello,

I think its how different we are what makes us different!  I dont focus on one particular thing and the value to my traffic / visitors is the contents they have arrived to view.   I dont personally aim to have a members base even though we are building one...

When my network release the 'latest news' stories and similar or articles or infact when we promote anything we have we are lucky to have our traffic enjoy this!

The value to my actual members is that they can use the features at my site to contact other people who are their to network knowing they will not be abused for sex etc etc. 

My business owner 'members' find the site valuable knowing that we drive the traffic we have and they great exposure at a clean quality network !

I have said this many times ... my site is not one site !! if you check how I have set things up you will see 'each and every' feature is treated as its own unique service and this is why we do well even.

We are a games site, news site, articles site, business networking site, social networking site, media platform BLAH Blah Blah.

We attract gamers, chatters, business people, old people, teenagers, and many other types of users as we cater each service individually for them (even though the site is in-deed one site).

For every single feature I have ... .each is treated as its own unique thing away from other site features !

I also promote my network in this way

Therefore we attract users / members for both entertainment and professional reasons and of all age groups and interests

my network has ummm maybe 80 different features of which I say 25 are separate individual services that different users can enjoy!

I have 25 different Niche at my site :)

some people here feel that because they have found it hard getting their websites noticed that it must be the same for other users. I noticed that some people also assume you need big ££££'s to go forward.

the biggest thing I find hard to understand is that because 90% + of dolphin sites are of adult / chat nature people assume that they are the only types of sites that would offer something to the users and in-turn keep their interest,.

I hope my network is living proof that other ideas and ways of doing things work even better in most cases and in-fact it is what my users and professional users admire about my network.

Its clean, professional, well looked after and in some cases my network has been quicker at giving my viewers what they are looking for before other big names / sites have chance too (news stories etc).

The truth is most professional users will not go near a adult based site / chat site for business/professional reasons ....  Lets say that 60% or more users are online looking for dating sites etc .... This leaves 40% of the world internet looking for good clean quality networks to use, and many many professional users are out there looking for clean quirky  networks to take advantage of for example with possible targeted advertising.

 I'm not mocking anyone.... I am just not as blinded by unsubstantiated statements as so many others obviously are.  Look at this logically Andrew.  You have a claim of a Dolphin site with a million members.  It should be pretty easy to find using a few properly tailored search queries.  There should be countless thousands of pages indexed by Google. A site like this should be near the top of the list when searching for Dolphin sites, yet it is not.   It's OK to promote the site every which way, but you can't tell anybody what it is?  Does that actually make sense to you?  It leads me to believe, that the reason for withholding evidence of this mystery sites existence, is that the content is too reprehensible to disclose. 

I'll post some links to some of the bigger, Dolphin sites I come across as I search for the million member mystery site.

Dolphin 6 site with 47K members: http://www.transformation.com

so houston,, what is the biggest dolphin site you have ever SEEN?

 RE:

 It would have to be the one I just posted a link to.   At least the member base seem to be real, and actively participating in the site.  It's actually a nicely done site, and isn't bloated with every mod on earth.   I did come across a Phillipine "dating" site, but it's 29K member base consists mainly of fake profiles.  When a site has thousands of profiles, with less than a handful online, it's a pretty good indication that either the vast majority of profiles are just useless database records, or that the "members" have no interest in participating in the site.

Getting a Dolphin site with a large number of registrations is one thing.... just turn off email confirmation and post links to your site everywhere, and sit back and watch your site fill up with thousands of useless database records.  If that's what you want, you'll be patting yourself on the back in no time.

Building a Dolphin site that actually captures interest, and builds a membership that actually participates in adding content to the site, is something entirely different.  There are Dolphin sites with a few hundred members, that I would call more successful than many of those with thousands of members..

I'll keep searching for a really big Dolphin site..... if there's a gay midget biker site with a million members out there, I'm determined to find it.

I tend to agree with Houston on what makes a successful site.

I prefer a site with hundreds of active members, than a bloated database with either fake users, spam users, or users driven through campaigns who then never return...

the real hard work comes when you have to maintain your site update. You have to constantly give your users a reason to use your site. 

This means CONTENT!

You cant expect to just slap a bunch of mods in there and watch people entertain themselves for hours on your site... after all, most of the mods if not all of them available for Dolphin are duplicating services other websites already do (although maybe not all in one place?)

So, content has to be constantly changing and interesting, attracting new users also has to be ongoing, not just a launch project.

Small niche can be 'successful'...

Exactly what I have basically been saying this entire time ...!

Not just lots of good regular content but seo with them also.

60%+ of my visitors is through quality contents that are made seo strong and then lucky to be highly ranked across world search engines.

I am guessing adding good contents could be more difficult for dating / adult sites plus the fact users attracted to these sites are not really there to enjoy good contents as such ....

 RE:

Hey there Ace..... where did those 14,000 members go?   Looks like they all skipped town..... well, all but 385 of 'em.

 well not that I have to explain BUT ...

I have been re-building my network and re-started members base ... yes I have 385 new members again within 2 days actually ... not long till I have over 14K members again ... especially with my normal joining rate of 100 - 350 new users per day !

Also, was this  to knock me ?! 

I still get 35 - 50 thousand unique visitors per month and I still hold thousands of #1 page google results ....

I can afford to lose members and my site still holds and gains the very best attentions ;)

I did always say that members base is not my main aim .... even though it was very good for new site.

how long do you think it will take me to make 5x the amount I had ...?  I can tell you ... no time at all.

Ummmmm... OK  For a minute there, I thought the profile grabber mod went nuts or something.

man i forgot whos team i was even on in this argument

so is a site that makes a profit at the end of the month "successful" or not?

 yes I would say so ... if it pays your bills and your happy then yes!

 nope all real profiles gained over 16 months I have been prepared to give up ...

I figure I will have this back within 6 months now if not sooner ;)

My site is successful without any members / memberships full stop !  it is where it is and the world ranking is better every day.

we are now in many countries top 50K or less sites ... and have page #1 rankings for MANY things ... not just one niche / area

Someone PLEASE delete this thread before a new member sees it and thinks it legit.

 what is up with new members seeing this thread ?! and why is it non-legit ?

its all educational to a degree ...

 RE:

 But I like this thread.  It amuses me.

To someone taking a psychology class yes... to someone building a website no..

 its educational as far as boonex and dolphin in respect that more new members think its not possible to have a good working site that is capable of doing well than members that do -- and basically give up  ... this thread shows it is indeed possible and from more than one member ...

It is also educational for other people to see from those that have spoken, what has worked for them, their approach to things etc etc

its a shame there has been more 'warfare' in this thread than positive responses...

However as far as myself > I have provided true information's about my own site, tried to help others also as a result and answered posts that have tried to knock my credibility

 LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

I can not understand why you would do this, delete/drop existing users, from your site.

It makes no sense.

 RE:

 I never thought I'd live long enough to see the day we agreed on something.

well I have the DB so not really dropped them ...

at this moment I am completely re-building my site ... A error on my part caused me to loose a lot of core files and some things was messed up ... My backups failed and as a result I am basically starting fresh

I am not really to bothered about the members base as its already building quickly (new and returning members) and my site still holds its popularity across the web whatever.

I have taken this fail and move as (a) a learning curb and (b) a change to make some big improvements enhancing and building on my network achievements to-date.

I know I could add the profiles back but I have issues adding them to new DB and am currently seeking advice / guidance about such.

I still maintain that someone who spams other sites for most of their traffic, and touts non-existent terms for PR, should not be making a topic about how successful and great their site is.

No doubt this database catastrophe came out of nowhere and all the active and prominent members were swallowed in a wormhole.  Spammers were spared because of witchcraft.

Love to see large and successful Dolphin sites, and I've had the pleasure of seeing and working on some of them.  But I admire them because, unlike here, there's no smoke and mirrors involved.

WHOAAAAA YOU DELETED YOUR PROFILES??? .. .. man i learned long time again (back last april) when i had 700 members and then my server crashed and the backup i had that was good was old and set me back to 200 members it took me FOREVER to get back to where i was,, and when you are talking THOUSANDS of members i wish you luck on the 6 months you have yourself to get your numbers back

i value my member count dearly not cause i have all 6100 coming to my site daily, but cause i send emails out atleast once a week and and always see one or 2 that was there last year pop back in to see how things have changed, i would never want to start back at zero, if it came down to that i would just shut it down i believe,, dont think i could go through the pains of the first years growth again

oh and far as nathan preaching the morals of "spam blah blah blah"  the most successful businesses in this world was built on taking what you like from more successful people or there ideas and improving on them... such as,, microsoft, facebook, apple macs, .....   man traffic is traffic if you own a retail shop and are offering better deals then walmart, i seen nothing wrong with standing in front of walmart with a sign that says "MY PLACE HAS BETTER DEALS!"

Linking to a site that has nothing to do with a video or spamming sites with links isn't creative.  It's spamming.  Standing in front of Walmart with a sign isn't what I'd consider spamming.  What he's doing is more like spray-painting the sides of buildings and screaming through a megaphone.

 Profiles not exactly deleted ... alot of the members photos etc which reached 15K of them etc was lost...

I don't think it will take that long to get members base back and in 2 - 3 days Im knocking on for 500 newbies ...

People only need to join socialmunch to communicate with each other so I don't honestly see this as a big lose even though it was not my original intentions.

I would also say that out of my 14K members only about 4K was actually coming back and seeing whats what etc ... They was gained over 16 months and originally my site was not doing well at the very beginning / non-interesting and therefor some of the original people never come back...

despite what Nathan keeps going on about spam ... I still rank excellent > I still get 35K + unique viewers per month and I in-fact look forward to re-starting.

I would like to re-mind all here that I now hold better positions against sites that have been around since the beginning of time .... I rank #1 Google for hundreds of topics and thousands of keywords and my network is not primary dependent on its members to make it successful ...

Even with this SMALL lose I have not been effected as far as the web and my network popularity increases the only difference is back then (16 month ago) I have to work my ass off for attention! today I get even more traffic and attentions without the growing pain.

Even with my slight fall back .... my network stands more successful that most others here ... I still  rank along the top sites in many different niches ... I still see live stats GOING BONKERS with traffic ... It's all good I guess

I currently get 100 - 350 new sign-ups per day ..

even if I only got 500 new members per week for some bazaar reason I will have more members and members that will stick around unlike at my networks very beginning

>> I will have 14K + members within 6 - 7 months EASY. 

Look at my rankings and do the math ;)

It is NOT exactly like I have to start ALL again .... I have a successful website full stop ;)

http://www.socialmunch.com/ appears to be down

funny thing is someone from over there was at my site few weeks ago spamming trying to get chatters

I bet the profile grabber mod went berserk, and ate the entire site.

it was exactly 1 month ago today he was telling us he was getting 300 new members a day, and was expecting 500 a day and to get a full database back in 6 months,, i wonder if all these people joining daily crashed his server?

 Nope, the funny thing is actually this comment from yourself ...

Spam your site ?! Not likely .... ;) You don't have the kind of users I wish to attract.

Isn't it the case that before and after this 'so called' event you have in-fact had a number of accounts banned /blocked from socialmunch for profile profanity, spamming and crashing my chat room at which time another Boonex member was also in there chatting.

If my site has ever at all been mentioned at yours its because you have been trying to steal my active members and drive them to your own site which failed as they use my network to get away from sites like yours. Maybe one of them noticed something similar and mentioned it in your chat ?!

As for my site itself, its doing very well and we are still going forwards. We are not popular for my members remember ? We come up on tops for hundreds of quality natural listings across search engines.