The Dogster, Inc Story

The Dogster, Inc Story
CommunityNext
February 10th, 2007
Ted Rheingold - Top Dog [email protected]
John Vars - Product - [email protected]
Steven Reading - Business- [email protected]
blog: blog.dogster.com
How did people learn about it?
• Craigslist posting
• SF Chronicle cover-article picked up by AP
• Picked up by Wired, CNN, Tech TV
• Easy to use, enjoy, share with friends
Time to Start a Company
Oh My Dog!
Founding Team
• Find partners you can trust profoundly
• Find passionate, hard-working partners
• Define the partnership early - business structure, equity, and
roles
3 Years After Launch
• 14 person, 4 dog staff
• Profitable
• Great team of investors
• 300,000+ members, 1.5 million visits a month,
25 million page serves a month
•Most passionate community in the
world =)
Community Is Your Most
Valuable Asset
Treat them like dogs... er... GODS!
First, Customer Service
• Customer Service is job #1. Get used to it!
• Without happy users your site is a bunch of fancy server code.
• Automate customer service as little as possible!
Reflect User Passion
• Everywhere in site. Design, UI, messaging, color
palette, vernacular...
• Be sincere
• Amplify their passions
• Don’t leverage your users (give them tools they can
leverage for their goals)
•
\
Community Guidelines
• Develop participation guidelines
• Get community involvement in
creation and revisions
• Post them everywhere
• Enforce quickly and consistently
Community Uptime Is
Mission Critical
• Like critical systems, your community must be
monitored
• Hire a Community Manager
•Strive for 100% community uptime
Community is a Garden
Tend it well!
Make Great Things
Core Components of PassionCentric Web Communities
Stay Within Your
Impact Horizon
• The Impact Horizon: your product must have an impact on your
community within this time frame
•Don’t look too far out
• For Dogster:
First year was 3-4 weeks
Second year was 6-8 weeks
Third year was 2-3 months
Fourth year is 4-6 months
Yo, Tips!
• Start your features with less rules, apply more as needed
• Be evolutionary - get feedback often and implement it (developer,
project team, internal team, plus members, community, final first
version)
• Skip version releases, favor small responsive iterations
• Get comfortable with being a little out of control
•Talk to your users all the time!
And Now For Something
Completely Different....
Revenue!
Primary Revenue Streams
• Sponsors
• Direct ad buys
• Premium memberships
• Virtual gifts
• Bulk ads
Psssst: What worked for us is Integrated Brand Campaigns
Think Sponsors
• Get the first one!
• You’re never too small to land a sponsor
• Sponsors can provide growth capital
• Caution! Sponsors don’t scale well
Circle of Trust
Integrated Brand Campaign
• Find the right advertisers for the site - be picky
• Build campaigns that bring the advertiser into the
community
• Don’t be deceptive, ever
• Campaigns should offer something special to your users
• Write your advertisers’ copy
• Think beyond banners, find the right place is to position
their message
See Ya’ Round the Dog Park
Woof, Meow & Thanks
Check the sites: www.dogster.com & www.catster.com
Slides available: blog.dogster.com
Ted Rheingold - Top Dog [email protected]
John Vars - Product - [email protected]
Steven Reading - Business- [email protected]
Bulk Advertising
• Adsense has paid for monthly server fees
(exactly) and nothing more
• Network ads sell you on high CPM,
disappoint you with insufficient inventories
• Affiliate networks didn’t add up