Growth rate??

[ROBD]

Geez man... thanks for the extensive effort. I really appreciate it.

And yes, it is version 1.1.3

So... all of this twitter/facebook/google plus gets you users or rankings or both?

I think advertising on Facebook might be a good idea. Can you target specific groups?

 

[Carlos]

Geez man... thanks for the extensive effort. I really appreciate it.

Ya welcome!

So... all of this twitter/facebook/google plus gets you users or rankings or both?

Don't worry about the rankings. That's determined by how many people searches the keyword or content. Google determines it by how much it's linked, how much it's searched, and yadda yadda.

I think advertising on Facebook might be a good idea. Can you target specific groups?

Nope. Leave those open if you want the widest possible net.

 

[DBA]

I think advertising on Facebook might be a good idea. Can you target specific groups?

Nope. Leave those open if you want the widest possible net.

Unless you prefer throwing money against a wall and hoping some sticks, target your ad audience as close as you can. It's almost creepy how in depth you can target Facebook ads.

Just looked at the Facebook ad setup, "open" target in the US is ~169 million and if I broadly target it to my niche it's down to 2.5 million people. I don't know about you but I'd rather target it to a smaller group that's more likely to click the ad/like your page.

Back in 2011 I decided to build the brand on Facebook. I ended up spending a measly $180, in Facebook ads, to get it started. If I remember right that took me to around 9-10k "likes". Then I noticed a trend in people from foreign countries (not my target audience) liking it. So I went and disabled all countries except the United Stated and Canada from seeing the page. After that the growth slowed down a little so I spent another $50 in ads to get it rolling again. The idea is to get it big enough that it reaches critical mass and starts growing via the recommendations etc. I can go days, if not a week, without posting anything and still have a number of people "like" the page. For example in the past 8 days I posted 9 things across 3 days and added 644 new likes.

Ok not sure where I was going with that lol, regardless......good luck on building your community!


BTW I'm curious, what is your niche (feel free to PM it)

 

[Carlos]

Unless you prefer throwing money against a wall and hoping some sticks, target your ad audience as close as you can. It's almost creepy how in depth you can target Facebook ads.

It's not really throwing money at the wall. The thing you need to understand is that Facebook has around 800 million users worldwide. I will explain right now...

Just looked at the Facebook ad setup, "open" target in the US is ~169 million and if I broadly target it to my niche it's down to 2.5 million people. I don't know about you but I'd rather target it to a smaller group that's more likely to click the ad/like your page.

Well, here's the thing. I'm going to use Call of Duty as an example here. Each game is an average 20 million units sold across COD4 to MW3.

Here are the figures I set last year:

COD4: Modern Warfare – 17 million units.
COD: World at War – 11 million units.
COD: Modern Warfare 2 – 20 million units.
COD: Black Ops – 18 million units

That's 78 million units sold worldwide. That's about as big as NES, or PlayStation. This means your mom, your dad, your grandfather, your gradmother, your uncle, your aunt, your nephew, your niece, your cousins, your brother, your sister already know about "Call of Duty." Not even World of Warcraft can touch these nimbers. Not even. Sorry. Not even.

So... Going by this market number. Combined with Facebook's market size, at 800 million users. It's more or less a collateral damage. With this big fat market size we see here, more than likely, you're going to be able to get 100 likes even if your page is a small call of duty site. Whether it's a forum, whether it's a blog, or a downloads site, whatever it is... You can "throw money at the wall" and get your 100 likes.

It's been done, and I've experienced this first-hand. $50 to $100 will net you this much likes.

"Well, if this is true. What do you think of targeting?"
Well, if you go by what I posted. That 100 likes isn't going to be realistic on a marketsize of 500,000 people, unless your niche has a very powerful niche sector, such as a FPS multiplayer - Borderlands is currently growing in popularity right now and has been since it was announced. It became one of the fastest pre-ordered game in Take Two's history next to GTA. So, even if the game sold 500,000 players on first week, you can still get 100 likes on $50. Why? Because there's a pull with this brand. The force is strong with this one.

Make sense? It does not depend on who you're targeting to, it depends on [if] it moves the person to like your page.

Let me put it in another way. I spent just around $70 for the MVC3Forum ad, and it got me around 110 likes. Why? Simple, really. MVC3 was rising in popularity at the time because people have been waiting for a new MVC title since 2000. It only died off by the time the game was released, and into the summer, then in turn, they don't want updates, so they remove you from the list of their likes. MVC3 was plagued with many problems in the game itself. So, sites like mine stand to lose.

The takeaway here is that you need to know how big a market is before you can just "throw money at the wall." In MVC3's case, I knew it would sell around 2 million, and it did. I benefitted from it for a while until fans complained about Capcom's coding in MVC3. When UMVC3 came out, it didn't do any wonders. In fact, it was the beginning of the death of MVC3Forum.

BTW I'm curious, what is your niche (feel free to PM it)

I'd like to know, too. If you'd like to PM/PConvo it.

 

[Crazyfruitbat]

Unless you prefer throwing money against a wall and hoping some sticks, target your ad audience as close as you can. It's almost creepy how in depth you can target Facebook ads.

Just looked at the Facebook ad setup, "open" target in the US is ~169 million and if I broadly target it to my niche it's down to 2.5 million people. I don't know about you but I'd rather target it to a smaller group that's more likely to click the ad/like your page.

Back in 2011 I decided to build the brand on Facebook. I ended up spending a measly $180, in Facebook ads, to get it started. If I remember right that took me to around 9-10k "likes". Then I noticed a trend in people from foreign countries (not my target audience) liking it. So I went and disabled all countries except the United Stated and Canada from seeing the page. After that the growth slowed down a little so I spent another $50 in ads to get it rolling again. The idea is to get it big enough that it reaches critical mass and starts growing via the recommendations etc. I can go days, if not a week, without posting anything and still have a number of people "like" the page. For example in the past 8 days I posted 9 things across 3 days and added 644 new likes.

Ok not sure where I was going with that lol, regardless......good luck on building your community!


BTW I'm curious, what is your niche (feel free to PM it)

Thanks for the information on this, I've been looking around for info on this wondering if it could be benefical.
With the larger amount of likes on content did you see any results in conversion to signups on the site itself or was the activity mainly kept on facebook? Curious to wonder if facebook is good at advertising your brand or to help build the community.


As for the original poster's query, my website (www.pixelatedphotographer.com) is in an already saturated market and so it's difficult to get new users.
In 2.5 years we have 220 users, almost 11,000 posts and 1,023 threads. We promote with twitter (700 followers) and facebook (120ish), post a lot of original content and we do a podcast as well.

If you have a more specific niche you should be able to get better results than us if you put in the same amount of work, for us there are so many massive photo-based forums to compete with.

 

[DBA]

Carlos don't take this personal but $70 to 100 likes is a very very crappy ROI. I'm mind boggled that you think that you shouldn't target your audience, even if you have one of the most well known games. Sure your grandma might know about this game (btw mind doesn't) but I would never target grandma's or anyone else over a certain age. Same goes for me, I'm a twenty something who knows what this game is but don't own or play it and don't have any intentions to. The idea is to weed out a lot of the people like me and get a more narrow target, even if it still is 20-50 million people.

Looking back I think that $230 got me 6,000-8,000 likes, which in my opinion is a pretty decent ROI.

This almost makes me want to take $100 and see what I can do with it in your niche. All I'd suggest is try narrowing it down and see what happens, you might be surprised.

 

[DBA]

Crazyfruitbat - I use Facebook mainly to build the brand and promote other non forum things, not so much to try and get new signups. We have had a few come from there though, however like I've heard from other people it's hard to get new signups from Facebook, Twitter seems to be more effective.

 

[Carlos]

This almost makes me want to take $100 and see what I can do with it in your niche. All I'd suggest is try narrowing it down and see what happens, you might be surprised.

Somehow, it seems like you ignored what I even was trying to say.

Narrowing it down might sound like a great idea to you, but to me, on paper, it doesn't sound so good. Basically, because you're omitting the greater community out there. You never know if a facebook user is a call of duty player or not. 50% of facebook users don't really put their favorite past times in their profile. For example, I don't put "video games" as my favorite subject on facebook.

I love movies, but did I put it on my facebook profile as a favorite? No. I loved The Dark Knight Rises, but do I have it on my profile? No. Do you see where I'm going?

When you select your options in fb ads, it goes from 12,112,120 to a measly 2,202,202, right? This is what I meant by not liking it on paper. I do realize you just flaunted that you got 6,000 - 8,000 likes on just $230. Congratulations for making me feel stupid.

Carlos don't take this personal but $70 to 100 likes is a very very crappy ROI. I'm mind boggled that you think that you shouldn't target your audience, even if you have one of the most well known games. Sure your grandma might know about this game (btw mine doesn't) but I would never target grandma's or anyone else over a certain age. Same goes for me, I'm a twenty something who knows what this game is but don't own or play it and don't have any intentions to. The idea is to weed out a lot of the people like me and get a more narrow target, even if it still is 20-50 million people.

You, again missed my point. The point that I was making, is that there are a lot of people who know about Call of Duty, and that I should not discount casuals. The greater market on facebook is too big for me to ignore. But I guess my tactic was a failure.

 

[DBA]

My niche is dirt bikes/motocross. Since you'd be hard pressed to find someone that's never heard of dirt bikes, should I target every Facebook user out there so I don't miss a "causal" dirt biker? Or specifically target it to dirt bike riders, who have the highest probability of clicking the ad, and letting the casual people find it themselves after the page grows.

 

[DBA]

Ok so I decided to put my money where my mouth is. Spent $10 on ~166 million US users (Open) and another $10 on ~240,000 highly targeted US users (Targeted), both were shown the same ad.

Open (~166 million users):
61 clicks that turned into 35 page likes for a conversion ratio of 57% and a cost of $0.2857 per like.

Targeted (~240,000 users):
281 clicks that turned into 251 page likes for a conversion ratio of 89% and a cost of $0.0398 per like.


As you can see the targeted users have a higher conversion rate and a much lower cost per "like". Plus the targeted users also had a drastically higher action rate, 205 compared to 11 (action is defined as photo views and post likes after clicking ad). Which makes sense as the targeted users should be more likely to participate on your page.

One thing I'd like to point out though is that I took the targeting to an extreme. I usually try to target to 1-3 million users as that gives me a better return. For example here are the stats to another ad.

Targeted to ~2.9 million users and had a budget of $72.70:
8,603 clicks that turned into 6,789 page likes for a conversion ratio of 79% and a cost of $0.0107 per like.


*Results may vary because of your niche and ad content.

 

[ROBD]

Hey, I got sidetracked from this thread and forgot all about it.

@DBA: Great responses and tips man, awesome to see real conversion numbers and examples.. Thx for the share.

I agree not only do I want to narrow down target audience on ads, but I'd want to get it as laser focused as possible.

btw, is there a minimum for adspend on facebook?.. like can I just go drop $20 with a new account just to test the waters?

@carlos: It seems like you're getting a little worked up over possibly being wrong.. nothing to be upset about.. you should be happy as hell to figure out how to better grow your business/sites, regardless of how you learned it.

In general, in advertising, you want to get as targeted as you can with your audience.

Try it out, and let us know how it goes.

 

[Crazyfruitbat]

Crazyfruitbat - I use Facebook mainly to build the brand and promote other non forum things, not so much to try and get new signups. We have had a few come from there though, however like I've heard from other people it's hard to get new signups from Facebook, Twitter seems to be more effective.

Cheers for that - it's what I'm also seeing as well. Signups over twitter are a lot more successful

 

[Craig]

IT is a vicious cycle. You need members to get good content, and you need good content to attract members. I started my site in February 2012. I now have over 640 threads and over 8,000 posts. For the first 5 months I think it was me and 2 members talking to each other, but then it finally "clicked" This past week I have been thrilled that I have had 20 new members join. I also use facebook. I am not too sure however, if Facebook helps all that much. I have over 500 people "liking" me on facebook, but only a couple have actually joined the site.

 

[D.O.A.]

Those of you with successful forums, how fast did you grow? How long til 1k posts and members? 10k of each?

In 2008 our forum started with 30 or so members from a similar forum, we're a niche site if anything so that helped as there are only a handful of sites like ours. I've been a member or modded these other sites since 2004 so I had a good idea what people wanted. We now have over 43,000 members, 70,000+ attachments in 270,000 posts. Within 2 years we had 10,000 posts/members. I didn't bother with SEO too much as word of mouth got around. We still don't rank that well for keywords I consider vital but even then we always have around 300-400 online at any given time, with 10,000 lurkers showing up once when we had a particularly interesting video posted. Nginx and our dedicated server handle all the traffic spikes well so I'm happy where I'm at right now. I expect us to overtake all other sites like ours by 2015 lol.

 

[Craig]

In 2008 our forum started with 30 or so members from a similar forum, we're a niche site if anything so that helped as there are only a handful of sites like ours. I've been a member or modded these other sites since 2004 so I had a good idea what people wanted. We now have over 43,000 members, 70,000+ attachments in 270,000 posts. Within 2 years we had 10,000 posts/members. I didn't bother with SEO too much as word of mouth got around. We still don't rank that well for keywords I consider vital but even then we always have around 300-400 online at any given time, with 10,000 lurkers showing up once when we had a particularly interesting video posted. Nginx and our dedicated server handle all the traffic spikes well so I'm happy where I'm at right now. I expect us to overtake all other sites like ours by 2015 lol.

Bravo! Great numbers! I am very impressed, and envious! I too am a niche site.

 

[Flexin]

Ok so I decided to put my money where my mouth is. Spent $10 on ~166 million US users (Open) and another $10 on ~240,000 highly targeted US users (Targeted), both were shown the same ad.

Open (~166 million users):
61 clicks that turned into 35 page likes for a conversion ratio of 57% and a cost of $0.2857 per like.

Targeted (~240,000 users):
281 clicks that turned into 251 page likes for a conversion ratio of 89% and a cost of $0.0398 per like.


As you can see the targeted users have a higher conversion rate and a much lower cost per "like". Plus the targeted users also had a drastically higher action rate, 205 compared to 11 (action is defined as photo views and post likes after clicking ad). Which makes sense as the targeted users should be more likely to participate on your page.

One thing I'd like to point out though is that I took the targeting to an extreme. I usually try to target to 1-3 million users as that gives me a better return. For example here are the stats to another ad.

Targeted to ~2.9 million users and had a budget of $72.70:
8,603 clicks that turned into 6,789 page likes for a conversion ratio of 79% and a cost of $0.0107 per like.


*Results may vary because of your niche and ad content.

Did you have it set to use the $10 in one day or set to run at certain times of the day?

James

 

[DBA]

Did you have it set to use the $10 in one day or set to run at certain times of the day?

James

No it was over a couple days.

 

[Flexin]

No it was over a couple days.

Thanks. Is there times of the day that work better for you?

James

 

[DBA]

Thanks. Is there times of the day that work better for you?

James

Always ran it 24/7. If you target it right, time of day shouldn't matter much.

 

[Carlos]

@carlos: It seems like you're getting a little worked up over possibly being wrong.. nothing to be upset about.. you should be happy as hell to figure out how to better grow your business/sites, regardless of how you learned it.

My problem is that at first it felt like he was trying to discredit what I was trying to say, and then he did his own test to (it's his wording, not mine) "put money where my mouth is." I can be wrong sometimes, and I can admit I am wrong, but when I have the knowledge already ready to make a response. I don't want people to be throwing "you're wrong, this is right" yadda, yadda kind of condescending posts. It rubs me the wrong way, I know DBA wasn't trying to be offensive, but these posts just rubs me the wrong way on the basis of telling the other person he's wrong in the same tone I was just saying.

In fact, CODForums is sailing much better waters than it's ever been, see for yourself....


And then, not to be outdone...