A Question for the Ages  − 13 September, 2007

wade1j (September 13, 2007. 08:56pm)

Treat it like a woman.

For someone you really care about, there are sacrifices that are made to make the relationship work (i.e. watching chick flicks, backrubs, feminine hygiene products in your bathroom, etc.) You might not like it, but it's done for the overall good of the relationship.

Your gut tells you if you are putting up with too much (i.e. "you can't go out with your friend and go on a 3 day bender") That's where i draw the line. She gets the boot.

I think that because you are passionate, you will know when you are compromising your emotional goal for the financial goal, and vise versa. You might have to deal with creating a product to continue building a community. Once you feel that your community is being lost you have to know when to dial back on the product.

Unless they are offering $500 million, then take it.

kga245 (September 13, 2007. 09:38pm)

Kind of a nebulous answer to kind of a nebulous question. How about some concrete suggestions? The usual suspects are: charge a subscription fee for an increased level of services (such as unlimited stories, or backup storage of videos and photos). Another popular service might be to charge a fee for printing books with your stories. We've been serving ads here, and that's been generating a little revenue, but I'm not sure advertising is the right way to sustain this community. Any other ideas?

wade1j (September 13, 2007. 10:20pm)

Sorry, i guess that answer falls into the "hugs" category.

tonka (September 14, 2007. 12:55pm)

i think ad placements on the site is really the easiest way that generate money. however, it should not be limited to just placement of banner or word ads. there should be some creativity as to how the ads should be executed. e.i. brands can have their own personality write about their own everyday life... it can be a fictional character where in people in the community can relate to. however, you may have to think about this... since it goes against the idea of dandelife...writing about your "true" life.. but it could work for brands such as coca cola (teenage guy writing about his everyday struggle as a teenager or for kraft ( a mom writing about her cooking success and disasters or being a mom to her kids or simply being a wife to her husband). brands can also own a certain page... put their own brand elements only in the confine of text areas and not totally changing the whole look and feel of the site. they can also talk to a member and sponsor him or her...

you can also explore doing Press releases in major magazines (lifestyle) so that it can spread the word about the site and increase traffic. or a member of the site can be featured in a magazine mainly because he / she shared something different and when people from the site read it it inspired them to do something for others as well.

the book of great stories in the site is a good idea. for you to minimize the cost you can have the compilation and publishing sponsored by companies. Sponsors can be the one to choose the stories that they want to be published. the nice thing with it is that the writers are ordinary people sharing their life and learnings... :D the books can also have editions depending on the topic. there can be a teenage edition, professional edition, parenting edition.... in this way you not only create something that can inspire people when they read the book but also inspire the members in the community to write something that can inspire others. (it can also be a contest if you want)

the shirt announcement that i got from your email is really nice... the "free hug" campaign is great. but can we explore quotes from the entries of the people in the site... and the quotes will be rendered on the shirt in graphics ( i don't know probably vector type of thing). the back part can have a bigger dandelife branding. :D do i sound so marketing already?
hehehe.... let me know what you think on this one... just some ideas i have in my head now...

basically, the whole idea is to create a venue for the members and readers to have an exciting experience.

kga245 (September 14, 2007. 03:49pm)

Quotes on T's. I like that. let's see how successful the "Free Hugs" T is, first, yeah? I think the branding thing would work, as well. I've seen a ton of examples of companies that are soliciting stories from their consumers. Everyone from Cadillac to Sure (deodorant). Telling personal stories is huge right now, but, sadly, those brands are choosing to do that story-telling on their own sites instead. That's tough for a guy like me anyway, since it's pretty much a one-man show here. No biz dev help anymore. Not impossible, however. Just difficult. Keep up the good suggestions. I like the feedback so far.

JFrenette (March 7, 2008. 08:13am)

Sorry I missed this post. Here's a couple ideas off the cuff:

1. Sell some expanded Dandelife merch; this site is definitely cool enough for people to want to wear the green (or have a laptop bag maybe, etc), and besides as tonka mentioned it's a good branding/marketing tool ;) The folks at Veer do this masterfully (although I don't know how much $ it brings in for them). It's painless for us users because we'd opt into buying it.

2. Two themes I've noticed in people's timelines are concerts they attended and jobs they've held. I now I've done both of those. LinkedIn has a pretty firm lock on the networking job thing, but what about a type of Dandelife-friendly job board? Something that maybe ties people together from similar career points (you'd have to add additional optional account attributes and some data mining), but also displays paid for ads from companies. I've seen enough companies expand into job boards (37signals) to think it might be a profitable feature. Dandelife is about people, and most people need or have had jobs--it's part of the modern human experience.

And concerts...

Partnering with some sort of concert promotion/ticketing agency could be a good match. The music industry is crazy enough right now that I think there's a lot of new companies trying new things. The monolithic Major Label system is being vigorously shaken up, and maybe there's a company out there that's taking a new approach to band promotion that might be a good match for Dandelife.

Not sure if any of this is what you were looking for.

intrepideddie (May 10, 2008. 05:38pm)

I got to thinking about this again since Pea Eye Parker started with her "Dandelife writing challenges." I haven't worked out how this could be incorporated from an income-generating standpoint, but I can see how the concept could easily be used to generate interest/activity. Maybe "sponsored" writing challenges? Really fertile concept, could do quite a bit with it.

peahayes (May 11, 2008. 12:58am)

I'll give you cold hard cash, because you are helping me to be a writer and because what you offer means so much to me. But that's not really a business model. But I'll still give you cold hard cash if you'll take it. I think you could get other devotees to give you cold hard cash too. The trouble is when the site costs money and someone's never heard of you, they'll often choose the free site over the site that costs. I would be willing to pay cash to know that my stories would always be safe on your servers, because I have not kept copies. At the rate I write, I don't really want to keep copies! Your site organizes them much better than I ever could.

peahayes (May 11, 2008. 03:47am)

Hey, what about this. First month or so free. Then you start charging. As we have now seen proven, Dandelife has addictive properties. Once the person is hooked, they will want more. At that point they'll probably be willing to reconsider the free/not free point of view.

kga245 (May 12, 2008. 07:15pm)

Cold hard cash is nice. I've been toying with the idea of a "digital annuity" for a while as well. Think of it as a backup for all your stories for your entire life. When you croak, or after a certain number of fixed years (whichever comes first) we export your stories and send them to whomever you name as your beneficiary. Put a deposit in now, let us do the rest. There are two problems I have with this business model now: 1 it's really expensive at the moment. 2. It's morbid. Now as for the subscriptions... I do like that model. And I don't see any reason that couldn't help us along the path to a digital annuity as well...

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Keep 'em coming!

peahayes (May 12, 2008. 11:18pm)

I think that there are users of many types on Dandelife. The suggestions above are as varied as those types. I think it would make sense to have multiple pricing models, and to have people choose the model which works best for them. They might not know what that model was until they'd used the site for a little while. But if they did, then maybe they could get a small discount by signing up sooner. It's funny, but my husband thought that I was dead wrong to put the responsibility for preserving my stories on you, and he's probably right for now. But with your suggestion, I could pay you and it would be OK.

peahayes (May 12, 2008. 11:22pm)

How expensive is "really expensive"? Morbid only bothers some people. People buy cemetery plots years in advance. Some even pay for entire funerals years in advance (my parents did). We all know we're gonna die. I want someone, the right person, to "inherit" my stories when I go. When you export the stories, they ought to come on a CD or DVD which organizes them Dandelife-wize. Or does that go without saying?

peahayes (May 15, 2008. 03:23am)

So how's it coming? The ideas? I had some great ideas for feature requests, and then I thought, "Wait, this guy's a one man shop giving us the labor of his love. He's trying to figure out a business model." I'd love to see you & Dandelife "thrive" as you love to say so that you could add all kind of new features and GET PAID FOR IT! (in more than just Thank You's)

kga245 (May 19, 2008. 05:33pm)

New developments are coming along nicely. I've developed myself into a corner too! The new thang barely looks like the old anymore. I'll post advance notice to all the dedicated 'lifers soon. We're getting ready to go into a new private beta (super top secret!).

I am not working on this alone, BTW. I have three very dedicated developers in Uzbekistan. I wish I could afford a larger team and I'm sure they'd enjoy the company more too. But, alas, I think we're keeping up with demand as the unit we are.