Hey, Marketing Genius!

Hey Dominic,

Lots of great questions! It's hard to generate the type of traffic needed for a start-up to become successful when you have a limited budget for sure. I'm not big into media stunts and I think you have a good base to work with.

I would look into some paid advertising on key websites that reach your demographic.

Start out with the ever standard Google Adwords: http://adwords.google.com

Set an incentive in your ad for FREE CREDITS with NOTHING TO LOSE! Don't pay more than a few dollars a day to start, since it can get costly.

Then move on to more targeted banner advertising where you pay a monthly fee ($10 - $1000) to promote yourself on high traffic websites: http://buysellads.com/

Choose sites that focus on resume creation (some small business owners are now trying to find steady work!), tutorial sites based around the recession and small business, job boards (that will allow advertisers for NON-PAYING jobs; read TOS), local Seattle businesses (if any), etc.

I would try to put yourself in your target audiences shoes and put together a survey for your current member base with a 5 - 10 credit incentive to fill out within 24 hours. There's a reason they signed up, go find it and use it to gain new members.

1. Why were you drawn to DibSpace?
2. What were your expectations of this community?
3. Do you log in often? Why / Not?
4. Would you recommend it to another freelancer or small business owner?
5. Who do you think would really benefit the most from DS?
6. If we gave you an incentive to promote DS to your friends, colleagues, etc, would you actively promote us on blogs, forums, networking events, etc?
7. We're launching new banner ads that are cool, creative and vibrant -- just like you! -- would you help us reach more people by posting on on your Facebook, MySpace, Blog, Company and/or Personal website?

Best of luck to you.

Cheers! =)

B | www.aShadow.com

Hi Dominic,

I actually signed up for DibSpace recently, and I really am interested to see it grow. However, to be perfectly honest, I'm not checking it religiously because I feel that it's not going to grow to what I'm looking for just yet; I've decided to check it in about a week or two. I think this is similar to what other people are feeling right now, too, and it's not bad - in fact, I feel that it means that DS will snowball rather than grow in a linear fashion.

In terms of how to expedite that growth, I'm thinking that you could expand part of the site to include a "student section" or include something about being student-friendly. I know a lot of high school and college students who not only do manual work like painting and lawncare, but also tutoring and music lessons, and a multitude of other services. I have one friend who does wedding videography. There is a huge market out there, and this site could be particularly convenient for the "online" generation. Businesses could also offer business advice to students if they want to pursue a career in that field.

Another option is that you could expand to post "wants": people can post services that they would like to recieve, and the accompanying dibs offer, rather than waiting for the offer to appear.

Thirdly, you could try to get people to do combo deals - I'm not even sure what the deals would be, but something "organic" that shows that you, the creator, are having a lot of fun with your creation. Fun is more infectious than word of mouth, in my opinion.

Finally, you could do some special events: maybe a 5 dib-funnel off to a project(RED) set-up on your site [which would also bring in the opportunity for NPO work, if you want to play that card]; you could also have "prime time" [or something less cheesy] where everybody who completes a Dib transaction in a, say, 2-day period, gets 10 extra dibs (10 cheaper for the person buying, 10 more Dibs made by the one offering the service).

Those are just some ideas to bring more traffic in, not touching on advertising (because Brandi really hit on everything).

Let me know if they're helpful!

Sincerely, Matt