Growing Our Little Community

Announcements
1

Hey friends,

So I just wanted to bring up an inevitable topic and also get your thoughts on moving forward. The initial response to our little community here has actually been great for the amount of effort put into advertising it. Almost no effort at all, actually. To walk away from “almost no effort” with more than 5 signups is actually quite a good turnout. I think that initial testing shows that you guys want something different, simple, and friendly.

With that in mind, how would you guys go about growing our little community? I’ve got some ideas I think are great, but I’d like to hear yours.

2

Pay me like $100 for every fake bot based registration I bring to this forum.

In all seriousness, I got the main point that this forum is free from the toxic politics in the hosting industry, so what?

What are those magical traits which will make me type hostballs.com in my browser tomorrow?

  1. I basically need a community. Why? coz thats how I gained knowledge by reading others’ opinions.
  2. No half-assed zombies. Fill this place with active members. Make your interweb friends to log in daily and “discuss” can be related to IT (hosting) or not, depends.
  3. Make @WSS & @Nekki troll lords of this place.
  4. Have some obvious drama.
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Personally, my pro-borders, pro-wall, pro-skilled immigration worldview can probably be translated over to a hosting forum.

If this place is going to be different I think it needs to focus on quality over quantity. To do that I believe word of mouth is probably the best tool, selectively inviting folks from other places.

I think a solid community probably only needs 75-100-ish daily active users and 300-400 weekly active. Less = dead, and more is fine as long as quality stays up.

I’d set some very reasonable short term targets with whichever method you run with vs. going (host)balls to the wall and pulling in anyone with a pulse, sampling the quality of signup as they come in and start posting.

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4

By my count we’re at 31 users, not bad in what… 48 hours or so? 72? Hell I’ve already lost track of time.

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5

I heard Elon Musk is coming too

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6

Junkie Janurary, Freaky February, Malevolent March…

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8

You spelt January wrong, maybe you need to go back to alpherbet school.

9

Harken! The thick layer of sarcasm cannot penetrate this one! Someone, get the treppaning tool!

10

You could always just use Fiverr to get a college student to spread hostballs flyers on their campus, that always works when I need to generate traffic! /s

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11

You could always purchase banner ads at lowendballs /s I’m sorry

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12

Friends, this is growing really fast. We’ve definitely an opportunity here, not to be the “killer” of other communities, but to shape our own. A place where provider and customer can come and feel engaged.

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13

For a community that was created 4 days ago, I’m pretty surprised there’s new posts every time I check back on - which is like every 30 minutes.

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14

To be fair, @Jarland DID invite most of us directly. :wink:

15

Literally only directly invited two people, and tweeted it from my personal and mxroute accounts.

16

Well, now, I feel special.

… and not only 'cuz I get the bus mostly to myself!

17

I’ve sent a few direct invites. Surprised someone already got the Hetzner rep over here, lol.

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18

…and yet Katie denied my advances.

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19

I have! And that’s because Katie is awesome!

20

I invited @Tom & @Alex and @Liam invited me so I imagine LET will mainly find out about this place soon at the pace it’s growing.

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21

I was talking with @Ryan and he’s the one who told me to join.

Please @Jarland buy @Ryan a beer for me. <3

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