My Social Network in First Six Months Of 2014
I have been an exciting half year for WebmaisterPro — social network for webmasters. There were so many ups and downs, but let’s say everything is going 50/50 according to the plan.
January — Change of Business Model
My social network was started few years ago as non-commercial project, but the major change came in January 2014 when I’ve decided to go full-time with my project. Nearly a month was spend into planning and goal setting, which is the longest period, I have ever spend in my life on planning stage for web project.
February — Business Accelerator
It seems that the year started on the right foot and in the early February, the project was accepted into SoftLayer Catalyst business incubator. This is definitely a promising venture that at least reduced the expenses related to web hosting. Excellent, performance hosting, with zero downtime and immediate support. Well, not quite sure how to get with the mentor and marketing help programs that are offered with this business incubator, but eventually I will get there.
March — Google Penalty and Penalty Revoked
The “wheels” turned back in March, when the project received manual penalty by Google, related to the fact that few blog posts were published by authors from MyBlogGuest in 2012. I would say that I was really mad, but managed to get Google penalty lifted in 5 days.
April — Template Shop, Partner and Disappointment
During April rules for members blogging at WebmaisterPro became much tighter, though even it was announced several times, many bloggers tried to ignore new rules and got their articles rejected.
At the last week of April, the first step for commercializing the project was done. We’ve implemented premium website template shop that got few sales in the first week.
New feature related to authentication were integrated, too — loging with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google Plus credentials. I have to admit that this gave perfect boost to the project.
At the end of April, I thought that I have found the perfect partner and co-founder, this end up to be great disappointment. Investment discussed was cut by half and the partner took 40 days holiday, without even login to the project. Even didn’t share a single link anywhere on the web or social media.
May — Sales High and New Features
The best month every in terms of sales. The template shop sell premium themes for WordPress, Jigoshop, Joomla, Drupal and Magento on a daily basis.
In the same month huge development and new features implementation was done. New features — freelancer platform and crowdfunding for web projects. Though it seems that these new features complete the whole picture, appreciation from members was very low.
June — Partner Fired, New Goals Setting
After 40ish days missing, I received an email that my partner wants money. Well, excuse me but you are dragging business down.
In the middle of June I’ve started to draw new strategies and checking few Joint Venture opportunities.
Another great disappointment is related to some of the top tech media websites. I’ve tried to enter in contact to convince them to write few notes about this unique web project and didn’t get a single reply. Just an educated guess — pay or advertise and they will publish it, though I am not so interested about these junkies!!!
Tried to apply for few business accelerators, again disappointment. It seems that nobody is interested to invest in unique project with clear goals that is based in my home country Bulgaria or the country where I am living now — Thailand.
What is Next?
Being in the web business since 1999 have make me prepared. There is only one recipe — KEEP PUSHING! It is a fact that web businesses usually drift between write or wrong about 50% of the time, until everything is done properly.
I will continue looking for partner/investor for the project and aim to the main goal — to gather all web professionals at one place!
