Show your successful project at the Dolphin!

Somebody will show its successful project at the Dolphin! It will be interesting to watch.

I'll save everyone the trouble

http://www.boonex.com/forums/?action=goto&search=1#action=goto&search_result=1&successful&tlts&0&&topics&0

Better not show anyone these sites. I have statistics about the same, but it is not about what the real does not show.

Sadly, Successful sites will not show you there trade secrets. Find a niche, Focus on being unique, exploit your strengths and be in the right place at the right time. Others will tell you that there are too many sites out there that you will have to compete. Don't even try,  better off playing the lottery. Funny how you should even think that the opinion matters. Here is real life.

My mother told me when I was 18, that I could not build my first home. I sold it when I was 19 for $240,000 in early 1980s. By the time I was 23, I owned over 20 homes. Who would of thought that C student could have done such wondrous things.

There was a man who went Bankrupt seven times, before becoming successful. His name was Walt Disney. What do you think would have happened if he stopped after the first try? Imagine all that we would have missed out.

If I had a dollar for every time someone said that they would save me some money. I would not be posting on this board. I still watch those commercials.

 I'm not trying to detract from your post but Walt only declared bankruptcy once when his company was Laugh O Gram films (1923). I think people would have stopped loaning him money after 2 or 3 times 

I hear lots words along the lines that it takes the average self made millionaire being bankrupt 2-3 times before the 'hit the big time'. 

Now you could look at a statement like that and say 'keep going, never give up, success will come eventually'...

Or you could look at the fact that in order to go bankrupt, you have to have debts, which usually means you have to be spending money on your 'business venture'...

there lies another possible 'key' to being successful with a website.

Investment...?

I've seen some websites (not dolphin) spring out of nowhere, lots of advertising, and usually keep going for a few years in the public profile. Investment. At that point, people either stick with them (they succeed long term), or they get sold out, or they get dropped. I guess then they join the 'bankrupt list' of people working their way up the ladder 'if' the owners keep going and don't give up.

But, it brings the question, how to get investment these days 'if' you have a project that shows it can make money back for the investors!!!

However, before any financial investment you will need to invest your own time possibly for a long time!

The key to success is having a good faceman.

 It's funny to read about trade secrets. There facebook, twiter and do not hide.

retaining your users is a hard battle ... getting and maintaining natural good ranking listings is the hardest battle ...

Set goals,, dont stop, and be prepaired to be knocked on your ass a few times.

Viptopia is a good stable running site that almost never made it out the first 3 months.. back then it was named thegettogether.net  .. got the site sorted. Bought out 2 other chat sites that had a core of around 100 constant daily chatters.. then I ran 10 thousand in facebook and google ads each and right when i hit 200o real users bought and paid for and had the site looking like it was off to the races... my host crashed and the node was down for a couple days.. when it came back up all i had was a back up of the first 300 members, which didnt matter anyways cause all the chatters had moved on and found somewhere else to chat.. I almost cried honestly. .... BACK UP PEOPLE,, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BACK UP!!

second kick to the balls came when we got word stickam was closing.. my chats were only able to support 100 at a time and we were over limit every night to the people people were not able to get in and chat with their friends,, and me and pranshank and newton was working around the clock for 3 days to get not just the chat able to handle unlimited chatters but to get the site itself to handle the number of people who were signing up. We also took that opportunity to do a full name change. and in all the mayham the media server went down on Friday,, and we were unable to get in touch with the media host that weekend which ment now cams,,  for 3 days so us three sat there and watched while my chats went from number in the several hundreds down to nothing quick.. pranksank and newt would just tell me over and over it would be ok we would have it all sorted and it would all be fine,, but deep down i knew it wasnt, i just blew a load of cash to handle the traffic we was getting as a blessing due to stickam closing.. yet most left soon as they seen there was issues those 3 days... Im telling you all now,, 3DAYS that is all it takes to go from top of the world to right back to the bottom again.. but I stuck with and and will continue to, we have constant numbers and do quite well and are growing in steady numbers daily.. but it will take me to next February to get back to where I was this past February.

rangerchat ... total different story.. we did have our downs for a bit after the first 6 months but that was do to internal fighting.. it is a very niche site and the live radio call in show we host there is what sells that network.. we was blessed to go viral the first week.. im talking 10 thousand plus listeners a day.. crashed many servers trying to get it all stable, and when I got it there internal bickering happened and it cause a split and we hit the floor,, but now like viptopia we are growing in impressive numbers daily and should be quite big this time next year, it just celebrated its one year date not long ago.. so 2 years to get it all ironed out seems to be the time it takes to get a site tested and really where you want it,, not saying that the work is all done in 2 years,, the work is never done!

never ever ever ever ...... ever done!

everyday brings on new challenges

tussery's experience would seem to indicate that once you reach a certain amount of users/traffic you might want to start looking at redundant servers to keep your site from dying if something happens.

OMG, I have had these experiences and worse!!   First hard efforts was failed at the hands of host and bad servers ... very active site went dead after nearly week being offline and host that claimed to be 'Dolphin Experts' had no clue what to do as far as dolphin issues or the server ... in the end I solved server issues myself (back then I had no idea about servers) and other issues with files after days without sleep but all was lost which then in-fact took the site months and month to recover from ....

AFTER ALL THIS >>> got site and community where I wanted it again with 14,000 active members, 50,000+ unique visitors per month including TOP ranking listings for hundreds of keywords and niches ... I made a silly mistake and at time believed my new host was making weekly backups for me to find out that there was no backups ever being taken and I lost ALL 14K users, lost over a million pages of quality content, my traffic went down to around 1,000 unique visitors per month and the site it self was ghost town!

My race to the top and my failures are well documented at Boonex ...

I am lucky enough to know what I am doing as far as SEO, getting top listings and gaining exposure and I have finally worked everything back up again which is now better than ever before ...

If anything, I have learned to do almost all tasks and fixes myself ... I try and educate myself non-stop as far as servers, php and Dolphin and I only use other peoples help as a serious last choice for when I am really really stuck.. I DON'T LET ANYONE into my server OR files ever unless I totally trust them and know that they know what they are doing.

No one but the site techs goes into the server period!  As for the site files; I will clone the site and let them look at that if they need access to the site.

At this point, it is time to have colocation set up so the site falls back to a backup server.  This is something that I need to learn about.

Well now I am hitting 11,000 active members again with around 100,000 unique visitors monthly ... I also have more quality content and I have been trying to learn what you suggest myself ... My idea is to have 2nd totally individual server that takes a copy of EVERYTHNG in real time and when one server shows issues / dies for whatever reason the 2nd server kicks in and takes over without anyone ever realizing there was a issue and without manual assistance ... I don't think this will be easy to achieve though as servers would have to be able to constantly update each other of all changes / events etc and somehow the 2nd server would need to know when it is needed to take over ...

 did this months ago.. cron does a back up every other day then ftp's the file to a ded on the other side of the globe.. if server a goes down... i head over to server b .. expand the tar.. redo the dns and after propagation we or back in business!

 there is no  greater feeling then saving your money and then plopping down about 20 grand on ads and doing a role of the dice and praying to the lord baby jesus it pays off.. then to see it start to work gives you that tingle deep in your soul thinking "this is gonna work" .. then to watch it all melt only hours after the roulette wheel stops!... then when google pulls your adsense like 3 weeks after you get back up and going for no reason other than they can.. well that is just icing on the shit sandwhich they call "learning as you go"

tussery Viptopia really worth attention. Thanks for the info.

 20G on ads ... Stuff that!  I have never used any form of advertising at engines or programs to gain traffic or members ... Just pure hard SEO, Content, promotion, development and word of mouth.

In-fact I wonder if day after days and night after night of hard work and tears for years and then loosing it all tops 20G ?!  if I think about it we have prob's lost much much more due to mistakes, errors and at hands of others!

I think there are many more stories of failure than anyone cares to admit ...

I tell you .. that time I lost the 14K members and over million content REALLY REALLY was a teary moment! Including loosing a number of doors that was beginning to open for me I honestly felt like never looking or hearing about dolphin again.

I am glad I stuck with it though ... I have learned a few hard lessons and improved the way I do things.

I have keywords (many many keywords) for many niches) with TOP natural listings across Google that I know for a fact my competitors have to pay BIG MONEY just to have their ads / adsense along side me ... I don't mean to boast on this ... well maybe a little BUT my point is with the right efforts and knowledge I save hundreds of thousands of £'s per year or even months compared to the BIGGEST NAMES out there and I still have listings with better positions and naturally.

Maybe even someone from the Dolphin members will show own a website?

 but Josh, you are..

yeah the last time I did ..... I WAS ALMOST EATEN ALIVE !!!

I'm just happy I was able to back myself up here with factual stuff ... something has changed this time ....

wheres HL and Nathan ?!

Josh I remember when you trashed your database at like 16 thousand members.. I was shocked I will say dumping it all that far in and starting back from zero took some balls... If i had to go back from start I think it would put me in a nuthouse!.. far as you getting eating alive in the 2 famous forums here "biggest sites of 2012/2013" .. man I wish we could have a huge forum fall out of "mines bigger than yours" again.. those were the days!

p.s. if you are kinda over that fall out we had a couple years ago Id like to maybe gt some seo help from ya ..  I been in a slump for a while now I was king of quite few high traffic keywords but its been on a decline for a while now.

 yeah my numbers might be a little fuzzy right now remembering the past ... 14K or 16K members or whatever ... in-fact in total due to past errors (on my part and others) I worked out I lost well over 50,000 members between 2x sites!

I appreciate what your saying about it took some balls to pick myself up again! Indeed it felt like my world had ended and in honestly the pressure was that HUGE that it effected my personal life a little too ... Building it all back up was the hardest thing ever especially knowing I had done it all a million times before (with efforts I mean).

Hey man did we fall out .... really it was like small dispute! I never wanted to make enemies with you or anyone else here and I have brushed all crap under rug!  I consider most people here (those I have talked to and worked with) my friends including newton, Jay, yourself  and a few others ;)

I'm sorry to hear about you listings / SEO ... I have always stressed that good listings are the hardest thing to get let alone maintain ... it's one thing getting there in the first place (which is incredible) BUT staying at the top is another battle all together ...

As far as Forum fall-out ... YEAH I'M IN!  this place has been far to quiet past year or am I wrong ?!

Is it possible to make a dolphin like myspace? Maybe someone has already implemented?

This thread has all sorts of interesting comments that I want to read more carefully, and some sites and links to other threads that also mentions sites - I will likely go through all of those.   The original question of this post though "Show us your most successful Dolphin project" wandered into an number of different topics as it seems to have on the other threads.   Among these, was challenging the credentials of someone who claimed to have a successful site, and warnings that you should never tell anyone about your site here. 

There do seem to be some highly successful sites, including a few with memberships over 100,000, but I am still taken by how few there seem to be - even accounting for the fact that many of them are adult sites or are in "stealth mode" for some reason.   

I wrote a blog post here a while back about how I considered apparently low "success rate" of Dolphin sites to be the most critical issue here, and I still am not sure they have gotten to the bottom of it.   Maybe that is too big an issue to cover all at once but if you look at any other open source program they have successes to point to all over the place.   Maybe the question was asked wrong here.    Instead of "Show us your successful Dolphin project" it should have been "What Dolphin projects do you know about that are really successful".   Asking the first way just open up the wrong kind of debate.   I would rather see an independent list from experienced members here of what they consider to be the most successful Dolphin implementation.   The information is probably here, just spread out all over the place, but it would be nice to see it in one place.   

Can anyone name the top five? 

 I also like to read the opinion of experts.

HERE GOES !! I was honestly trying to avoid naming my site again as I have done all this before and we almost had BOONEX WAR ...

I name SocialMunch as a successful dolphin site and not just because I own it .... it has been showcased by Boonex and still is currently!

As well as being a SUPER ACTIVE network / site (not just in members) SocialMunch has also worked up to the point where we hold top natural listings above some of the biggest names out there across many niches! At different times when we cover things like news stories we have had over 30,000 unique visitors over 48hrs. SocialMunch gets a current average of 100,000 unique visitors per month and people come to the site for many many reasons (fun, entertainment, to connect with others, to learn from each other and so on). We are not an adult site and it is very moderated and cared for!

up until the last rebuild I made we ranked in USA's top 50K sites online and UK's top 25K  and the worlds top 230K sites ..

The rankings have fallen back a little again however the network is racing back up where is should be! I have shown Boonex factual proof of all this before with the traffic, how we do it with great content and SEO, and also keyword listings / positions etc.

I would also like to add that my current 11,000 members should really be around 75,000 REAL members ... I don't believe in fake profiles etc an never tried this game ... the real members was reduced in numbers due to 3 major rebuild / restarts after heavy mistakes on my part and other people I trusted in at the time ... as a result I was forced to start entirely fresh and as I think about it I surprise myself I don't shed tears ... I'm being serious too!

I have seen a few sites with 100K members and I seriously question them! Why? Because of my own experience, my knowledge of the web, SEO and other factors and obvious things noticed when actually viewing some of these sites. If you asked them to provide factual evidence as I have in previous threads you would see a totally different story.

pity that this forum goes in all directions

You give the keyword is in the first place

@detective08 - I agree that your site seems successful, but the whole point of my comment was that I would like to see what other people said were the most successful sites - I have already seen you mention yourself as the most successful on several different posts that have been made on this topic. 

 hummm, good luck with that! Seriously ... I don't think to many people here would say about sites they know are successful ... Maybe a few IDK ... We have gone through this all before and 90% of answers back was BOLLOCKS & BITCHING!

I think VIPTOPIA .. (use to be thegettogether) is good for the type of site it is! I feel I have a great site BUT I would be totally amazed if even a few people here was to mention it even though I have many followers that have seen me rise and fall and rise again!

The thing is no one seems to like talking about sites they know has done well and if you ask for names you get 'sorry can't do that'

As I have said in past I don't see myself as 'most successful' ... but I am willing to stand in line and let others decide for themselves.

Yeah, when I get chance I like to talk about my efforts and where I am with it all ... the thing is you don't hear about how well others have done OR many good reviews of sites at Boonex from other people too much and most things I have heard about > the sites cannot be named making it impossible to make own decision ...

Here are a small number of keywords... all varied and for different things ... I have in-fact hundreds like this and people like Newton have looked before and noticed for some keywords for my site and content have multi listings on page 1, 2 and 3 of google for same pages etc!

If I was to seriously name them all and variations I would be here for days and days typing :/

free social cams - 1st in world
social chatrooms - 1st in world
gigs marketplace - 1st in world
types of computer hackers - 2nd
matcha nama - 2nd
husband and wife understanding - 2nd
camonline 4th
salsa flare - 4th
social chat rooms - 2nd
teen video chat - 7th
unlimited video chat -9th
Discount Advances - 2nd
hacking types - 12th
facebook status smileys codes - 3rd
promo code quick quid - 5th
clean video chat - 7th
friendly webcam chat - 4th
fun things to do for girls - 6th
quick quid promo - 5th
talk with cam online - 8th
teen cam chat 13 19 - 7th
text my ex back - 11th
free video chat with women - 11th
types of hacking - 10th
random world news - 16th and 17th

CALTRADE  you should have made a fresh thread asking others what sites they know are successful!

In this thread Panfilov asked for whoever to name their successful project ...