During the summer I was thinking of different marketing campaigns that will help bring awareness of Commuto to students across North America. Flyering, brand ambassadors, student newspaper ads, sponsorships and other ideas were being thrown around. At the end we decided on handing out dry erase boards to students. These boards were around 2 feet by 1 foot, with our logo, slogan and website address around the edges and the middle was white where students can write and erase using markers. These would hang in their rooms and be a functional marketing ad.
I was assured that students really found these types of boards to be useful and would keep them for the duration of the first semester. To me this was a no-brainier (which looking back at now is quite comical). I would get to put a board in their rooms for 4 months for what amounted to around $0.35 per board. If it was $0.35 per impression it would still be a good deal, but this has the possibility of being much more than that due to the board being seen not only by that student but anyone else who walked into their dorm room.
I mentioned this idea to quite a few people and they all agreed that it was a good idea. I’m not sure if they agreed with the idea or my enthusiasm of the idea, but they agreed which made me think that I was on the right path with this type of campaign. So I went through a friend of mine who owns a marketing company which deals with colleges and universities in North America and we started the production of the boards and deciding which schools should receive the boards. After focusing on a certain demographics, we narrowed the school list to 50 schools, and about 150,000 students.
In my mind, the rate of return on this would be great. Even if only 5% of students were interested in our service, and I really believe that it’s a wonderful service for all students, then we would potentially get 7,500 new users which I would have been happy with. Those 7,500 would expand with word of mouth, and could potentially become much more, and finally make Commuto a viable commerce site.
The boards were sent out in the second week of September. There was a scattered launch, with the west coast schools getting them first and then moving eastward until all schools received them by the end of the third week. I gave the launch some time to see it’s effects. Within the first few days nothing happened which worried me, but I was assured by the marketing company that the results will happen within a few weeks following the launch. I waited and waited and still nothing. Now don’t get me wrong, we were getting some new users from various schools across the US and Canada, but I couldn’t really attribute it to this campagin because it was basically the same amount of users we were always getting, with no spike whatsoever.
I waited until the middle of October to panic. I contacted the the marketing company which was shocked at the results. I asked them to investigate this and they followed up with the student unions and confirmed that they received the boards and that they were handed out. Now, out of pure curiosity, I would have expected that at least 1,000-2,000 users would have logged onto the site just to see what it’s about. But it wasn’t even that. You can’t imagine my disappointment and frustration with this campaign.
I afterward wanted to test the market and launched a very cheap flyering campaign in 4 schools across the US where we handed out 500 flyers per school. That campaign got me more users than the whole national board campaign. So what happened? What went wrong? Did I use an incorrect means to get at the students?
This was a big time lesson for me. I tried to develop some hype through an expensive campaign and it failed. Terribly. Any suggestions on what I did wrong?
Thanks,
Stephen
Barters have been written about throughout history, some more lopsided than others. Manhattan was acquired for beads, gold has been traded for salt, and Babe Ruth was traded for what a minor leaguer gets paid today. None of these trades were fair, but then again, fair is in the eye of the receiver. Throughout history, bartering has always been the means to get what one wants, especially prior to the invent of currency. Using a bilateral or multilateral system, goods and services of equal value are exchanged between the parties therefore satisfying all the wants and needs.
While certain societies still use bartering as their main means of commerce, developed nations have long lost the art of the deal. Before the Internet became a household necessity, bartering was ineffective. Usually done in small organized groups, the quantity of items was lacking, and so were the trading possibilities. There were no means to expand the trading community beyond your local city. However, the use of the Internet changes everything. No longer were people trapped searching for trades locally, when they could now look nationally or world wide. The possibilities were expanding at a rapid rate and sites like Craigslist and eBay were taking advantage of the surge.
While society had embraced this reinvigorated means of commerce it never quite reached it potential, and that was due to the booming economy. In good times, people like to buy new. They store the old, or possibly sell it for pennies on the dollar, but bartering is seen as a dirty business, and no one really wants to use second hand items. However, now with the recession having taken hold of much of the world, bartering is gaining popularity again.
On Craigslist, bartering has grown significantly during the current recession. Last month, there were 126,710 listings in the barter category, up 80 percent compared with May 2006. People are looking to get value back for their unwanted goods again, and their options are better than ever. Commuto.com helps its users find people locally, in their city, school, workplace or anywhere else, with whom to trade with. By keeping the trading on a micro level, Commuto has minimized the fraud normally associated with online commerce and eliminated expenses such as shipping and commission. Commuto’s community approach allows users to join or create communities where they can meet, make friends and barter with people with common interests such as art, clothing, books, or anything else. There are communities being created daily in cities all over North America.
To some this recession has barely started, to others it’s in its decline. Regardless of what stage this recession is in, and how long it’s bound to last, people now have a way of getting some financial help by scavenging their closets and attics and putting technology to good use. Hopefully this means of commerce will continue to grow even after the economy has righted itself. People owe it to themselves to commuto. They might even make some friends.
I’m in a writing mood today, so I figure I will venture outside of Commuto and write about a great game I played last night. It’s called Braid for the Xbox 360 Live Arcade. It’s created by Jonathan Blow, whose games I’ve never played before, so this might be his first release of a large commercial game, but it’s a wonderful one.
Braid is a puzzle game where you can reverse time whenever you wish, so basically you can never die, which my wife appreciated. However, the puzzles are very well thought out and original. I’ve played games before which featured time control, but most were action games, and the puzzle elements were uninspiring. This is like the first time I played Portal, and proceed to not put the game down. It challenges your mind in ways that you have never been challenged before, and unfortunately, like Portal, it ends way too soon. What is it about these games which are so well done, that they have to end so quickly? I suppose it’s difficult to think of so many original puzzles, or maybe it’s the limitation of the size of the game, but it always seems like the best games are over way too quickly.
I wish Jonathan the best of luck with this game. I read his blog where he discusses quite honestly why the price of $15, (which to some may seem over priced for an Xbox Live game, but I assure you it isn’t), is the right price and how a game like this, which hasn’t received a lot of hype, might not sell as well as he’d like. It’s unfortunate that other games which have a 10th of the originality sell many time more. Hopefully this won’t be the case this time.
Thanks,
Stephen
Wired magazine has written an article on how to spot a fake listing on Craigslist and Ebay. Unfortunately, Craigslist is having massive issues with fraudulent listings, some reports list it as high as 40%. With popularity and success come those who will try to take advantage, and we are committed to minimize this as much as possible. Regardless, some of these points are valid also with Commuto, so here is the list with my comments: 1. “Try to deal only with locals you can meet in person.” - This is a great point and is actually the foundation of Commuto. One of the big reasons we thought local trading communities would be succesful is because they would help minimize fradulent listings since you are meeting with the person and are likely go to the same school, office or social group.
2. “Insist on cash.” - Doesn’t apply to Commuto since we are dealing with the trade of goods and not selling them. Regardless, some users might actually end up selling their goods, so make sure you don’t except fake cheques or money orders. 3. “Never wire money to anyone under any circumstances.” - Again, doesn’t apply to Commuto, but it’s still common sense. 4. “Craigslist plays no part in transactions.” - This is true to Commuto as well. We do not guarantee your trading partners, so please use common sense when interacting with someone. If a posting or inquiry seems suspicious then do not get involved.
As for eBay; it’s obviously much riskier than any trading site since you have to send your money in advance and hope that you will receive your goods. eBay does all it can to help its users not get scammed, and considering the size and scope of eBay, they do an excellent job. But again, meeting in person with members of your school, workplace, city, or other social communities is the safest way to make sure that you get what you want without any surprises. If you see anything that you consider to be suspicious, make sure you contact our support team at support@commuto.com.
Thanks and Trade Friendly,
Stephen
It’s been a hellish few weeks. We had a surge of new users that, thankfully, made us aware of many bugs and issues that went unrealized. We have rewritten our trade generator logic which was, ummmm…fun. We have also added new features based on user recommendations to make your Commuto experience much more interactive and exciting.The following features and changes have now been implemented:
Security Settings: We have added a new link in your profile page called “Security Settings”.In there you will find the options to control the type of emails you will be receiving from Commuto.You now have the option to control the following emails:
Promotional Emails
Updates and Changes Emails
Emails notifying you when Commuto members send you messages
You can also control who can send you messages (anyone in Commuto or just members in your communities).
Suspend Account: You can now suspend your own account when you will be unavailable for an extended amount of time.Suspending your account will make your profile and all your items invisible to other members until you have decided to reinstate your account.So now when you go on vacation or are sent to jail you don’t have to worry about trade proposals.Actually, jails could make for wonderful trading communities.
We have also added the following countries with their states/provinces/regions and cities:
Australia
Austria
Belgium
CzechRepublic
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Ukraine
United Kingdom
If you registered from any one of the countries above please go into your profile page and edit your location to add your state/province/region and city.Also, if you have any friends from these countries now is the time to invite them to Commuto.We will continue adding more countries as quickly as we can, and we look forward to providing you with new features as we continue to develop Commuto into the most interactive and popular social bartering site online.
Congratulations to Laura J from Los Angeles, California. Laura is the winner of a $250 gift card for Amazon.com in our random draw held today for all our members who gave us a chance so early on.
Thank you to everyone else who joined Commuto and trade friendly.
Early this morning Daily Candy wrote a wonderful mention of Commuto.com in their Los Angeles edition. This was the epitome of a good day gone wrong. We started off flying, with everyone here very excited about the prospects of what’s about to happen today. We knew there was a chance of some technical difficulties, but we managed to allocate all the servers resources to Commuto and were hoping that any issues that occur would be minor and short lived. Boy were we wrong. Daily Candy is a monster. They brought so much traffic that we managed to crash our severs several times throughout the day, and whenever we were operating we were doing so very slowly.
We will be upgrading our servers on Thursday night and will be able to deal with all future traffic. I just wanted to apologize to all the users and visitors who had to deal with the crashes and slow loading today. Its been a fantastically stressful day and I feel terrible for all those who ever affected. I hope you give us another chance, and I promise that your experience from here on will be much improved.
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. My sister has a site which had gotten a mention on Daily Candy in February and her site had crashed the same day as well. So yes, I knew what was about to happen, and yes, I under estimated it. My mistake. It won’t happen again.
As you are aware, Commuto has only launched recently and while still in beta has had a few development bugs. We have been working on fixing them as quickly as possible and hopefully you haven’t been affected by any. As a thank you for giving us your time and patience we would like to announce our first promotion.
Commuto will be giving away a USD $250.00 gift card from Amazon.com to one of our members. This is a random draw, but only those who are active will be included in our draw. So please participate in your communities, add items to trade and see what’s out there for you to get. Oh, and please invite your friends, neighbours and colleagues. The more members we have the better the trade options are for everyone.
We’ll announce the winner on May 2nd in our News Page.
As well, we are working on adding more options to our site that will make your experience much more interactive and enjoyable.Stay tuned for updates.
It finally happened. We got our first piece, or pieces, of publicity. I was checking our user count last night and saw a massive spike (for us its massive) of 76 new users. I immediately went to Google Analytics, one of my all time favourite website tools, to see where the traffic came from. Its incredible how useful Analytics is. Some days I spend hours just seeing where the traffic is coming from, looking at graphs, figures, stats and links. For a visual person like myself, this is heaven-sent.
The first mentions are below. They are from Trendcentral and FashionClub. I was actually very familiar with Trendcentral as is on my regular rotation of sites I read every morning, and I’m now familiar with FashionClub as well, which my sister would love. Thanks to both for mentioning such a young start-up.
I suppose the most often asked question by online businesses is how to advertise online for free or for very cheap and have it be effective. This is something I’m still trying to figure out. Our service is free, and I do believe it has great value to our users so of course I hope it grows by the oldest and cheapest form of advertising, word of mouth. Word of mouth is actually the most important method of advertising for us not because it’s the cheapest, but because the whole concept of Commuto is building communities and the only way to build them is by inviting your friends, neighbours and co-workers.
For Commuto, our advertising has to be contained and focused. City by city, school by school, office by office. If we scatter out too much we may get the users, but it will seem bare to those that do join, and I suppose that ends up being the most serious issue, how do we keep it interesting while not providing users any content. We have had users join from Arizona, Fairbanks, Alaska, Toronto and many other cities, but more often than not they are the only people in their city who have joined so far. I suppose all social sites have this issue initially so we’ll just have to wait for the site to populate and hope that those who joined in the beginning will be there later on as well.
One effective means of advertising I found yesterday was in the classified section on forums. I spend $1 to advertise for 2 weeks and we got 10 new users on the first day. I can’t be certain that all the users came due to this ad, but seeing as I haven’t advertised anywhere else yet, I am quite certain that at least 6-8 of those users are due to this ad. That’s a remarkably effective use of money but I doubt the return on investment would always be that high otherwise I would take a loan today for a mass classified advertising campaign.
Link exchange programs seem like a thing of the past. Google won’t allow them and that’s the kiss of death right there. So I’m left with personally finding sites to exchange traffic with, but currently we don’t have much traffic to offer. There is always a catch somewhere.
We are working on some big ad campaigns and partnerships with some larger companies which I can’t really discuss until its done, but for now I need to find other ways to get the word out. “If you build it they will come”…not if they’ve never heard of it. It’s time to get the word out.
If you have any ideas to share, please feel free to email me at sarbib@commuto.com.
