Tapatalk - yes or no

[Brent W]

and all works well? Do you use resource manager on any of them?

Yes. I will admit support is overwhelmed and frustrating at times, but I am happy with the product.

 

[Carlos]

Maybe because all the people visiting your site or registering via tapatalk are not actually people interested in your forums, but are actually spammers.

They ARE. They found the site on Tapatalk via suggestions and/or searching the list.

 

[caliman]

Thanks. But with the BYO we have complete control of the ads. I will double check that.

When I looked at that option I found you only have control of 2 or 3 ad spots. These had specific dimensions. In other words, you don't have true control - you can't place more ads because they don't let you - you get 2 or 3 ad spots - on their template - you don't have access to the template - you can't change it the way you want. ... Have they changed this? I'd be surprised.

 

[Brent W]

When I looked at that option I found you only have control of 2 or 3 ad spots. These had specific dimensions. In other words, you don't have true control - you can't place more ads because they don't let you - you get 2 or 3 ad spots - on their template - you don't have access to the template - you can't change it the way you want. ... Have they changed this? I'd be surprised.

It is an App, not a skin. Things aren't that simple, especially when you have to keep up with the ever changing version of operating system versions.

Apps have their place for some people and they don't for others. It doesn't really reflect poorly on Tapatalk that an app does not fit into your specific situation or others. The product that they produce rivals none that currently exist. ForumRunner is being run into the ground by IB's incompetent leadership and I don't even think there is another branded app company out there that can come close to what Tapatalk produces.

I have a forum with less than 80k posts that sees 20+ new members a day since purchasing BYO Tapatalk for it. You want to know why? Type Asperger's into Google Play or Apple's app store and we will be among the first results.

Type Ford Mustang into Google Play or Apple's App store and see where V6Mustang.com app ranks.

People need to start treating app stores as search engines. That is the number 1 reason apps are important to your forum.

I admit, they do not have the best flexibility but every post that a member makes from their phone, while not easily monetized, produces indexible content that Google search indexes and eventually presents to a desktop user or mobile phone user browsing with their browser.

For those who want to see the impact... take a guess when our app was officially ranked in the app stores based off this screen shot:



That is new members per day and yes they are legitimate users.

 

[caliman]

Those are good points.

However traditionally - and I think it still stands - if you have good content, SEO and calls to action, you will get new members. 20 members a day is not a lot.


But if you give up most of your ad real estate - and ad revenue - to a third-party app, you mostly likely don't get it back.

 

[Brent W]

Those are good points.

However traditionally - and I think it still stands - if you have good content, SEO and calls to action, you will get new members. 20 members a day is not a lot.


But if you give up most of your ad real estate - and ad revenue - to a third-party app, you mostly likely don't get it back.

This is a forum with 80k posts. 20 members a day is a lot. Like I stated:

Apps have their place for some people and they don't for others.

Traditional thinking also leaves people behind. Technology changes, the internet changes. I prefer to not stick around in the past.

If you have 1 million uniques a month and are tearing it up, you might not want to give up losing revenue by having tapatalk. The new members you gain might not be worth it right now. For others, a new face and new content means everything. No member left behind, I say. The money will always follow.

 

[Dakis]

I am sort of in 50-50 on this. I had a forumrunner BYO app back with vb, and got around 20-25k visits per month from it. I haven't regained those visits in full. At the time I was getting around 18k mobile/tablet visits on the website, and now with xenforo and the responsive layout I get around 30k.

Still, it feels better having your own app, I had a lot of people complaining when our previous app stopped working, and it does work faster than having to load every website page every time you click something.

On the other hand, having all of the site's functionality available, such as a gallery or a resource manager, is indeed a valid point - although I can't think of when I visited my own website's gallery through my phone, i mostly use it to browse new posts etc.

 

[Martok]

Those of you using BTW must be earning a reasonable amount in revenue already to justify the $99 setup fee and $39 monthly cost. There's no way that a small forum like mine could afford that. I don't get much through adsence. I do get more through Viglink but that's all through the website, I got nothing from Tapatalk's Viglink setup when I used them. That was a nice fiddle they did there, changing the previous setup from where you linked your Viglink account to where Tapatalk pay you directly, presumably after they've taken a slice of the revenue.

 

[Brent W]

Those of you using BTW must be earning a reasonable amount in revenue already to justify the $99 setup fee and $39 monthly cost. There's no way that a small forum like mine could afford that. I don't get much through adsence. I do get more through Viglink but that's all through the website, I got nothing from Tapatalk's Viglink setup when I used them. That was a nice fiddle they did there, changing the previous setup from where you linked your Viglink account to where Tapatalk pay you directly, presumably after they've taken a slice of the revenue.

For some it is an investment.

 

[Dakis]

For some it is an investment.

This. If I waited for my forum to make enough money to justify doing anything on it, it would have never grown.

 

[TPerry]

This. If I waited for my forum to make enough money to justify doing anything on it, it would have never grown.

I do it because I enjoy it.

My latest adsense "info". As you can tell... I'll be rich..... in about 5000 years.

 

[Allan]

Adding a poll to this thread would be appreciated

 

[Suzanne O]

No. It's easier just to use safari.

 

[realaqu]

yes, mobiel app is faster than responsive style, but forum runner is even faster

 

[Liam W]

The only good mobile apps are ones that are specially developed for your board, with branding for your board, that don't look like any other app.

They also have to be fast, and allow all features of your forum to be utilised.

Currently, there's no app that'll do that, however the responsive style does, and it works perfectly.

Liam

 

[techbroker]

Thank you all for your input my main concern from what we have heard is security. For revenue - we will be using the BYO branded service so will not expect to see any ads from tapatalk there.

Trying to find out if the security issue has been improved or if offer the app only to already registered users - so disable registration but allow login. It might be possible to add a registration tab that takes people to our native registration page from within the app.

I understand what everyone says about the responsive design - we are optimising that as well.

Thanks again.

 

[Giverny]

Well we were considering only the BYO for brand purposes. But from what I gather it just doesn't work. Have you used them at all?

I've used it for this exact purpose, and it's worked incredibly well.

 

[tapatalk]

Just saw this.. I have spent some time reviewing the feedback here and thank you all the input. The idea of BYO is really putting your app into App Store / Google Play search engine, exactly like what Brent mentioned earlier, plus the opportunity to monetize..

We have recently integrated StopForumSpam into Tapatalk as the first step to flight off spammer and we have blocked few hundreds of users on daily basis.. It's a good start and we are putting more attention on this going forward.

The idea of Tapatalk is to drive more users to your community, the app itself make it super easy for people to sign up and join, despite he is a lurker but you get to access his profile and email and ultimately you can reach out to email to retain them back to your community and encourage them to participate.

The app is delivering over 10 millions push notifications every day, 30% of users re-engage to your community thru push notifications and we provide this expensive infrastructure pretty much free for everyone.

It is a different animal as responsive layout. I think getting the site responsive is top pirority, and then get the app to power users to participate and contribute content back to your community.. more content, more index, and more SEO from Google...

Happy to exchange thoughts and idea.. This year we will put our focus on three things: 1) tablet 2) search 3) registration.

- Winter

 

[TPerry]

@tapatalk, your #3 really needs to be #1 on the list as it is causing a lot of grief for the owners of the forum. Even after making the suggested changes to the files I am still getting my registration restrictions bypassed. Simple solution is go back to where the forum owner can turn off ANY registration through the app and force it to the web browser so that all spam fighting/sign-up requirements of the forum can be met.

 

[Moshe1010]

Just saw this.. I have spent some time reviewing the feedback here and thank you all the input. The idea of BYO is really putting your app into App Store / Google Play search engine, exactly like what Brent mentioned earlier, plus the opportunity to monetize..

We have recently integrated StopForumSpam into Tapatalk as the first step to flight off spammer and we have blocked few hundreds of users on daily basis.. It's a good start and we are putting more attention on this going forward.

The idea of Tapatalk is to drive more users to your community, the app itself make it super easy for people to sign up and join, despite he is a lurker but you get to access his profile and email and ultimately you can reach out to email to retain them back to your community and encourage them to participate.

The app is delivering over 10 millions push notifications every day, 30% of users re-engage to your community thru push notifications and we provide this expensive infrastructure pretty much free for everyone.

It is a different animal as responsive layout. I think getting the site responsive is top pirority, and then get the app to power users to participate and contribute content back to your community.. more content, more index, and more SEO from Google...

Happy to exchange thoughts and idea.. This year we will put our focus on three things: 1) tablet 2) search 3) registration.

- Winter

In a year or two, browsers would have push notifications as well. Unless your app would do something remarkable, for now I can only see how your clock is ticking.