This is a guest post from M. Farouk Radwan of optimistnet.com.
In April 2014, I launched my social network www.optimistnet.com, and by the beginning of May we already had 180,000 page views and a few thousands registered users.
Our Alexa Rank jumped from 4 million in the beginning of May to 680K in a very short period of time, and we had more than 5,000 posts made on the network in the first month by our visitors.
It seems like a successful launch right?
Well in this article, I will tell you exactly what we did in order to reach those numbers in that extremely short period of time.
It was the third attempt
People always see successful projects then believe they were an overnight success, but in fact behind each success story are some failures you never knew about.
Even though our launch was successful in the first month, the reason we made it is that we failed twice before with two different social networks.
I launched my first social network in 2012, and only got 60 members in two months. I launched the second in early 2013, only to stop working on it due to serious troubles with the developing company.
So the success that happened with optimistnet.com was due to the incremental learning process that we went through.
People want to feel special
A few days before the launch, I said that a few people would be selected to be among the beta testers of optimistnet, and the response was impressive. 200 volunteers gave me their names and within 24 hours we had 250 registered users.
Remember when Google plus was an invitation-only site? Everyone was dying to join it because people want to feel special.
People are extremely curious
When you don’t make your marketing message clear (during the first few days of course), people become extremely curious to know more about your business. What is that yellow logo with a smiling face? What does your social network do? What can we find inside it?
In the first few days, the marketing team and me changed our profile pictures on Facebook to optimistnet’s logo (a yellow smiling face) and shortly everyone we knew was asking “what is that?”
Target an already existing need
No matter how great your marketing is, you will never get recurring visitors unless people really need your product. The reason we launched optimistnet is that we noticed that Facebook newsfeed had become extremely negative in a way that ruins the mood of so many people.
In other words, we discovered that people need to spend sometime on a positive social network in order to counter the negativity they come across in their lives. As a result we had recurring visitors from day one. Almost 57% of the people who visited the site returned back again.
Always search for unmet needs people have, and you will be able to create amazing products.
Make the process of signing up extremely simple
With each text field you add to the registration process, you lose more potential visitors. Make the signup process as simple as possible so that you convert the largest number of users. What’s even better is to add the option to sign up through Facebook.
Earlier, people used to be scared to use that option, but these days more and more people are getting comfortable with it. More than half of those who registered at my network did it using Facebook sign up.
Design the site for the impatient person
There are some patient people out there but most internet users are not patient and are not as computer savvy as you are. The extreme simplicity of the design we used made it so easy for people to write posts.
Most of the people who signed up at optimistnet found it very easy to understand what the site does and to make their first post. In one of my previous social networks that didn’t make it, and assuming that users were extremely computer-literate was the main reason we failed.
Don’t expect quick success
While we had a great launch, you should understand that each case might be different. Some sites start slow then take off fast, others take years before they become popular. So becoming popular fast is not the rule, but it’s the exception.
In short know that its possible to rise fast but don’t get disappointed if it doensn’t happen to you.
M.Farouk Radwan Is the founder of www.optimistnet.com, The Social Network For Positivity and Motivation.
Hi M. Farouk,
I enjoyed reading this post because I’ve had a similar experience with my new blog, in that my first blog was a practice run. No 180,000 in my first month yet but so many of the same lessons apply. Like you, I learned this through a few tries, with failures and successes peppered in between.
Make it SO easy to sign up that people can’t miss the opt in form. I posted a simple subscribe button at the top right hand side of my blog. You can’t miss it. Also, I’m paying strict attention to folks who are leaving comments on my blog or are sharing my posts on social networks.
I genuinely care deeply about each person and interact with as many folks as humanly possible each day, even if I have to stay up until midnight to respond to comments on my blogs, and to thank folks on all social networks. This level of commitment creates a community around your website and once folks feel special around you, they will return day after day and contribute their insight to your site, growing your community.
Traffic arrives wherever traffic is appreciated, right? You’re paying great care to your users, so they’ll come back again and again because they appreciate being appreciated. This simple law of life works incredibly well if you commit fully to caring for each commentator, reader, and social fan who has helped create your success.
Love this post M. Farouk because I’m using the same principles to build my current blog from the right space. I failed on and off for a few years but now that I’ve learned my lesson and I’m applying my experience I’m off to the races after only 1 week’s worth of blogging.
Awesome post.
I’m tweeting it now.
Thanks!
Ryan
thank you so much Ryan
you just enriched the post even more by your comment:)
Hi Farouk Radwan,
Found it very useful, Regarding signup forms what you recommend, popup or in the side bar?
look Ruban
i know popups bring better results but am not sure whether they can harm your search ranking or not (google) if you are sure of this point then go for popups
I can bet that after seeing this Blog post title no will ignore to click on the post link.I am saying this because i got this valuable article on kingged.com and became attracted to read the complete information completely.
I noticed and learn s very important thing from this article – “No matter how great your marketing is, you will never get recurring visitors unless people really need your product”. You are absolutely right why anyone will spend time on that product which is not their need.
I loved this useful article. Great line for bloggers: Don’t expect quick success. Keep sharing :)
thank you for your comment Amit:)
nice to meet you:)
Hi Farouk,
The first question I did ask myself was this after reading the post due to kingged.com went something like this; How can a site like OptimistNet fail?
You’re optimistic and not pessimistic and so there is certainly no room for failure.
If you’re having 1000 members already, then please change your data to 1001 for the name Emmanuel will be joining as well. HAHAHA!
hahaha, thank you so much Emmanuel :)
by the way, last update : we now crossed 10,000 users :D
Great tips. All about a sense of community and everyone feeling like they are included. There is also nothing worse then a site that is hard to navigate and find what you are looking for!
Thank you So much Tahlia :)
Hi M. Farouk,
Wow, impressive – I saw this on the Kingged community and just had to comment. :)
Heads up, the link at the top of this post is broken, but bottom link works.
Very impressive numbers as I read the beginning of your article, but am wondering about monetization conversions…
Definitely agree that folks don’t consider there were failures before success.
Yes, the more hoops you ask people to jump through, the less they’ll be willing to take that action, agreed.
Love your subheading, design the site for the impatient person, ha ha – hadn’t looked at it that way before. I mean, I have simplified my navigational menu and made choices very blatant, but never considered the impatient person, although the changes I’ve made do cater to their needs.
I’ll check out your site. Thanks for the info. :)
Talk soon,
– Carol Amato
@ Farouk,
I found your blog launch success story useful and decided to check optimistnet.com from problogger but I noticed that the link is broken. You may want to fix it.
How do you get 5000 posts that fast? It’s great to see that you stuck with it and tried several times. I wish you would have defined what’s “slow” and what’s “fast.” It makes sense to be patient, but you have to know that you are on the right track. How do you know?
its all about commutative experience, i had sooo many failures before
Success stories like this i love to read. it inspires me.
you mention
“In short know that its possible to rise fast but don’t get disappointed if it doensn’t happen to you.”
this is very true, not all can achieve what you just achieve in a month, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be achieved.
Once again thanks for this inspiring post.
And congratulations on your success.
Hi farouk, that’s a really inspiring article for me since i got few blogs that failed previously. Hopefully, next time you can write something about monetization from the optimistnet. Wish can learn something from it. Good luck bro :)
Hi Farouk Radwan,
I visit your site first time,
I am so happy to read about it because I also launched a new website that have 40 million Alexa rank on 2nd day but after some days now Alexa is only 1.3 million.
This post is very helpful for me to gain traffic and improve Alexa rank.
Thanks for sharing.
Areesha Noor