Anyone making money?

I was just curious how everyone is doing financially with their dolphin sites? Are you using it for a hobby? Selling mods? part time income? full-time income? Just thought i'd start a thread for anyone that wants to share their stories, successes, failures, etc.

Hello,

Yes, this is possible to make money too (even with dolphin). Need just don`t forgot about website promotion and making popularity bigger. Increase your visitors amount !

Can tell experience in PM

From next 1-2 week i will let you know

www.getlaidclub.com

i start live interviews with porn stars escorts playmates etc.

If it works i hope i will make good money  :)

my income only is generated via google ads and being paid to set up d7 sites

I didn't know you ran an installation service.

Well that's because I don't advertise here. Plenty of work in Jacksonville FL via my other company..

I was making money.  However, it's amazing how your income can drop to zero when your site no longer works.

I'm amazed at how many issues you're having. It sounds to me like you're pushing the script's limits (I doubt BoonEx does much stress testing, if at all). I recommend you write a book about the rise and downfall of your nighttime chatting empire.

Magnussoft,

And it appears you are the only one left on Unity to notice.

out of interest, what sort of money does google ads bring in for you? Ive never gone the adds route but am interested if its worth it...

I have a site started making some money. Launched 2 months ago, niche sports videos, I get about 10% members are up for paying for membership. so far, 400 members in 2 months, $400 a month and rising.

Not too bad after 2 months, plenty of room to grow....

I made around $50,000 from my Dolphin Site..indirectly....almost made around $400,000 but the contract fell through because of a business partner that was incompatible with our vision.  You have to have a strategy and that strategy needs to take focus off "oooh, I wanna be just like Facebook".  Basically, stop trying to be "just like Facebook".  You're going to doom yourselves.

Facebook, MySpace are 800lb Gorillas.  Trying to compete with them doing what they do best is like trying to fight Godzilla with a butter knife.

MOST IMPORTANT!! >  Your strategy must incorporate REAL people with real world ideas.

For those of you who are trying to get traction, my first recommendation is to take a deep breath.  Secondly.  be patient.....very, very, very, very, very, very, very patient.

Next. Read a little marketing book called the 22 immutable Laws of Marketing.  If you don't have the cash or time to buy and read the whole book, you can take a look at some of the key concepts here:

http://www.ericsink.com/laws/Immutable_Laws_Marketing.html

This is not my my website and I'm not affiliated with the author in any way.  These are just some common sense concepts that could help someone (hopefully).  When I get frustrated, I review them just to keep me going.

I have 4 in the works, all but one are for personal use and aren't really designed to create an income for me.

Townation.com is a towing & recovery website. I use the site to communicate with other like minded people in my industry. The site keeps me in contact with others and helps with my personal standing in the towing community.

usspeedwayseries.com, same thing, only this site helps to support my hobby which is racing IRL and other open wheel race cars. It's just getting off the ground.

denverpotholes.com is more of a test site than anything. I suppose I could create a dating site of sorts with it, it is a good url, but I have way too much on my plate now.

I guess what I am saying is Dolphin isn't just good for dating, it is a great community script that can be used in a miriad of different situations. My goal is to become very fluent in Dolphin so I can use it to it's best end. Currently, I am developing a dolphin site called denverparking.com that will be designed to support my towing and recovery company although it too, will not create income for me directly. I just see a lot of potential if they can ever find a way to put out a whole package of crackers without any of them being cracked.

I wanted to make one more point. I agree with what Chap1978 has to say about trying to mimick sites like facebook, myspace, etc. It has been done to death and they have already won. Don't try and copy them! In fact, my biggest problem so far is trying to get away from that mindset. I have a great example: The idea of creating a database of friends to exclude all other users of your site. If you are trying to build a site and your site doesn't have a high number of members,. the befriending feature severally limits the activity on your site. A new user joins and he can't find anyone to interact with immediately and poof he is gone.  This has been my biggest stumbling block with Dolphin.

I wish more people would share your opinion on this. I've worked with many people who have attempted to create a "<social networking site> killer." They all fail and the person ends up wasting hundreds of dollars on prepaid hosting, licenses and modifications. If someone wants to join MySpace or Facebook, they are not going to join your site; they are going to join the real thing. I also don't understand why people try to mimic the look of popular social networking sites. All you do is look more suspicious and end up with a letter from the real site's lawyers.

The only way to succeed with this script is to find a niche and cater to it.

Ok, I have an idea which I will continue to expound on in the next couple of days....it goes something like this.  Many of the sites that I've seen on here have the one of a few similar themes and they are:

1. Porn Site
2. Music Entertainment Site
3. Video Entertainment Site
4. Dating Community
5. Gaming Website
6. Basic Social Networking

Of course there are a few that are not in this realm but these are ones that I've come across quite a bit.  The fact that there are lots of these doesn't NECESSARILY mean that you are not going to be successful, it just means that you have some competition.  What I've found from working on peoples' sites and concepts is that most people lack "something".  These are the basic necessities for making some decent money off of one of these things:

1. A Plan (It's incredible how many people don't actually have a plan.  This IS business, how can you NOT have a plan?)
   1. In your plan, you need to identify your target niches, your budgets, and ultimately your exit strategy.  Having a great exit strategy can keep you going and motivated.
2. Please understand that it's people who drive your business, not widgets.  A gazillion widgets are great but people are better.  Try not to spend $5000 on widgets and $200 on marketing.  That's just not smart.  I understand that you do need entertaining things to keep your site "sticky", but more than that you need people.  Although I don't recommend that you trying to mimic Facebook's full business model, I do recommend that you learn one lesson from them and that is...it's not really about "widgets, it about people and bringing them together around common interests.  Remember, Facebook started out as a school website.
3. Please take a day or 2 out of your schedule to learn some basic html and  css.  It will lessen your stress, so, so, so, so much.  It'll also keep you from spending $40+ everytime you need a minor tweek to your site.
4. Either you need to be a coder or you need to have some type of budget to have a coder on standby to handle development.  If not, the first time you're hit by a smart hacker from somewhere like China or Senegal, you'll remember these words.  Oh, and you will get attacked, trust me.  The more popular your site becomes, the more of a target you'll become.
5. You need decent hosting...Your best option would be a decent VPS.  Cloud VPS is a great way to maximize resources while keeping costs down.   If you're trying to get 1,000,000 members, I'm sorry to tell you but Shared hosting just "ain't" gonna cut it.  Sorry to be the bearer of bad news :-(
6. You need to budget at some point for a decent designer for ongoing work or have one in-house.  You can usually ride on a good template for a while but many times you may want to integrate new components in your website to match the overall overall.  By the way, a coder and designer are 2 totally different things.  Coders are usually very logical, mathematical people who can fix things on your site when they code wrong as well as develop new functionality.   Designers on the other hand are usually artistic people who can make things look pretty.  Sometimes, you get lucky with a good "Developer" who can do it all.
7. Don't forget about the people.  Please remember the people.  You know, people like your neighbors, friends at the local bar, church, football game, school, whatever.  These people can sometimes keep your website from looking abandoned.  What you can do is schedule times around your marketing that everyone logs onto the site.  This way when people "come through the door", it looks active.

Whew, I just realized how much I just typed.  I do business plans and marketing plans for a living in addition to Development so I tend to get a bit carried away.  There is a lot more but I'll get to other things when I can.

Based on my previous post, my idea can be summarized as this...since 100% of 0 is still 0, how about considering partnering with other members of this community who have a similar concept with complimentary skill-sets and budgets?

Perhaps we should begin to create groups within Boonex (or another website) that give members the opportunity to find potential business partners who have similar visions but different skillss and resources.

Remember, 100% of 0 = 0

I say this because many people get on this "mine, mine, mine" kick hoping to make a gazillion dollars that is all theirs.  In the process of trying to make the gazillion dollars, they go broke because they didn't want to partner with anyone because of the thought of someone taking something that doesn't yet exists.  Once again, 100% of $0 = $0

I personally think, this is one of the best post around in the forum.  This post should be go in as a sticky for sure ...

Just my 2 cents :)

Thank you mods4dolphin, and you are DEFINITELY one of the best developers in this community.  I'm just trying to help cut down on some of the frustration coming from both developers and site owners.  Things have been getting a little hot around here.

Your right about finding a niche for listings, webcams are what I'm about...

This is how I support my software habit...lol

here's a screen shot of my adsense..I highly suggest the ad system. Some people really hate them, I found no one wants to pay for a membership unless something like porn is offered and that is not what I want to do..

was going to use the affiliate program but i guess it's been stopped? when i tried to register, the affiliate link was dead.

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

I don't recall any announcement about the closure of the affiliate system. You may want to contact BoonEx directly and see what they say.

who says you can't be the next myspace or facebook?? let's be real here, we ALL start on the same level playing field, and myspace HAS been at it's prime and is now dying, somebody will take the place of myspace and also same with facebook, someday it TOO will start dying and there will also be a replacement as well...if myspace said "oh well, friendster already exists so we won't even try" then they would have never passed up friendster. so the point is...if you want to be big like myspace or facebook then by all means there is NOTHING stopping you.

What a great thread! Chap1978, your words are very inspiring and I appreciate that you've taken the time to go into such detail for us.

Dolphin is a great utility that works out of box to form our ideas into a reality. Granted, it has some bugs - but so does everything else. The key here is to take your idea and make Dolphin work for you. I've been struggling with this for a little over a year now, but pushing close to 1200 members I think I am doing something right. This year my focus is more on marketing and less on development and I am hoping to triple my member base.

I am interested in knowing how everyone is monetizing their communities, and I am talking PG-13 content. Are you doing it with adsense or other ad revenue engines? I have had some thoughts on using modzzz's Review mod and including product referral links to places such as Amazon - idea here is people review products, automatic SEO generates traffic and the referral link to amazon after they read the review brings you profit. I am looking for subtle ways to generate profit, but am finding this may be difficult to accomplish.

I'm subscribing to this thread, I think it will be great to come back to on the days where you just want to throw in the towel and call it quits... had a few of those already and I'm very early in the launch phase!

I am more curious in how people are getting their members?

Posting comments on do-follow blogs?

Posting on forums, free online marketplaces etc etc ?

Free member ships. I own a biker site that is kinda swing site too. Its a tight niche. No one wants to compete with the big guys, Takes too much money, so I find smaller niches. Then go to ralleys, swing clubs, etc. e-mail the S!&^ out of the club members to get a few on your site for content, then add a few blogs, so that you have a few extra listings on google, etc,but mostly WORD OF MOUTH!! Get out there. If you dont have the money to avertise then promote on free sites, and for a small trick, it doesnt work as well as you think, but with enough of them, it does, go through yahoo groups! they have every kind of group out there and they are all looking for exposures. get your family and your friends to sighn up just to have some profiles(but my friends and family want even help)

I just launched 2 more sites, and they are grabbing a couple folks, face book helps but not as much as I thought.

But Please! As much as you will want to, dont load fake profiles on your site! It makes it worse in the long run. be honest about your new site.

Derrick

I will be honest, I used to post my links in blogs comment section basically trying to do free route but came to the realization that in order to make money I had to spend money. And I realized by paying for ads through Facebook and other platform my site membership increase greatly. I really dislike Facebook but I utilize it because of the vast quantity of users they have world wide.

Bringing an old quality thread back to life here -

I've been throwing around the idea of paid memberships, which typically do not work on non-pornographic sites like already mentioned before, but I have a unique market that will pay for certain content if they know it is there.

Another idea i've tossed around is loading up with adsense through out the site, and not showing these ads to paying members. One of the perks I guess you could consider - is anyone doing anything like this now, and is it working? I'm wondering if it might even breach TOS with an ad serving agency.

Some great points and ideas in this thread. Here is my 2cents worth;

I think for a new site it is critical to start with a light site, so as few as features as you need (must haves only). I see sites with ALL the features and gadgets, too confusing for the average users, it is frustrating and they just leave.An example is when I joined FB, I tried it for a day, got frustrated and left. Just too many options I find are killing my interest.

I like things to be simple and straightforward. I like features but they must be easy to use, very easy to use.

I also enjoy a clean site, not too much of everything as it is confusing to the eye and mind. I agree with most of you who state you must know your members, that is critical. Understand the membership you are going after, there is no way you will ever please all of them. So keep the ones you do have happy - really happy.

I would WRITE down your plan, focus, future goals, direction, the reason to start to site and what will it achieve. Have a bit of money put away for upgrades, changes, marketing etc.

LIke the guy said be patient and persevere if you want to reach your dreams and goals.

 good points.

I bet your an Apple (iPhone) customer too.. lol j/k

I'm still doing  well with pushing webcams..and the heyzap games..and music content

this is for one day on adsense

one thing for sure, and i know it was asked here, you will never and i repeat never be a myspace or facebook running dolphin. 

if you get 1k - 5k members you should consider yourself top of the heap. though dig deep in your pocket, because you are not going to host a site like that on $2.99 hosting services. 

if your site is a novelty, then you can look for some change from google ads or adbrite and that would suffice if in fact it is a novelty. 

if you are attempting to run a niche environment, get into that niche, you have to be part of it, not just think you are going to take over it. there are many sites that are sucessful, though they were immediately dragging wheelbarrows of money to the bank, and many times the frustration had them near hands up, head against the wall, and nearing resignation.

dolphin is a beast, running a business is a difficult task, both physical businesses and internet businesses. you have to consider just something as simple as the SERP on google, you search a term and there are 20 Million returns, now do you have a plan that is going to launch you to the top of that 20Million. if not you are destined to fail.

if you are not keen on marketing, not keen on SEO, not keen on site administration and server administration, pull the straps on your boots baby, cuz its fixing to get muddy.

"if you get 1k - 5k members you should consider yourself top of the heap. though dig deep in your pocket, because you are not going to host a site like that on $2.99 hosting services. "

I'm not after members at all Dos, I could care less about them signing up.

As far as sharing account, that's over and done, I now run all my other sites on a DS, not VPS, not Shared; the duvallocals.info is run from a home box running Ubuntu.

Newton be careful with the screen shots. It's against the Adsense terms of service to publicly display your adsense click through rates.

 lets just say its enough to keep me happy

Anyone making money?

There is always someone making money no matter what you do!

Like most mentioned here already, its not just putting up a site and have success. Its a study as well to get into all the needed subjects. A plan, investment, endurance, a good domain, knowledge and a lot more!

Your will power!

Most of all, its never finished learning from and with your project and what is needed :-)

It is definitve a very good start if you see it as your hobby if you are a beginner and get into it step by step without rushing things! Get your vision together, learn, listen, ask and most of all read a lot and not just little parts. There is always something written between the lines which you might figure if you read propper :-)

Life is beautiful

 @DD

absolutely correct. Learn all you need to know and the day might come you earn where you start earning a little or even more :-)

 Why would you want to be the next FB or myspace???? Social networking has to evolve!!!  FB has no fucus, its a bunch of nothing that society feels it has to be part of because someone else is art of it that they know.

I think the next step in social networking will be the niche markets... social networking with a point or purpose! My site launches in 10 days. It is built around a sound business plan, It has structure and a concept and a marketing stratergy. Will it make money???? I'm sure it  will.... But I know I am going to have to be patient. The site is already attracting BIG names within its niche, but time will tell...

As for the fs and myspace clones... please people dont waste your valuable. hard earned cash doing whats already been done. Dream a different dream and find a way to make it a reality.

 cool newt, it was a generic response. there are many, and i know many who think they can get the boonex approved or certified hosting for $4.00, and take over the internet and become the next myspace or facebook. 

they have done zero research, and have no clue what they are attempting to do. last time i looked it was costing myspace a little over 4.5 million to stay online, and they own their equipment, and have their machines colocated. 

so just to consider the cost of having the servers online, there are still other tremendous costs involved, systems administration, server security administration, and other staff that are a major part of that site remaining online.

so objectively speaking, the question is somewhat a catch 22, because there are many who make money with wordpress, ning, socialengine or just a number of other applications that are available on the net. they are not however, looking to take over the internet. there are misconceptions, and misunderstandings running rampant on the dolphin community in that respect. 

to those who are making money, KUDOS to you, and keep up the good work. to those who have not made any money, maybe you need to reevaluate your business plan. 

Sorry just came across this thread whilst actually looking for something completely different. My company is about to launch 4 Dolphin based sites for a client simulataneously over the next months. hand-ball.biz is the engine, handball4u.com will be the main portal etc followed by Africa, Asia, Europe etc.  My main business is events, promotion and sponsorship sales so I was looking initially for a platform that I could present our projects on, and interact with both the Client and the consumer.

(The sites are still under construction)

During this process we have quite frankly gone through hell adapting dolphin and fixing script issues.

Any way for my few pence worth, every business needs customers. Find a niche that has a massive TV following but no absolute structured community. For instance HB is watched by around 3Billion people each year. only 0.001% are as yet members of any dedicated HB online community forum.  

Try to become business partners with a major association, They will market the memberships for you, There sponsors will drive traffic and simply maintain a % rights in the whole thing.  Unless of course you enjoy spending 20 hrs a day trying to re-invent the wheel.

Anyone interested in handball please feel free to drop by and by all means IM me with any comments. All welcome. Since I do not post very often, I will mention Three people whose threads have proved very useful. Deano, Alex T and Houston Lively and everyone else.

Also my previous business partner recently passed away. Anyone that has an S&M site may recognise the name David Russell and Ritual Magazine. or Ritual Shoes. I would like to publish a One off exclusive online edition of all his work. If any one is interested please let me know.

im new to dolphin but i can tell you this i bought a website prior to getting this one and it cost me alot more and it was useless. 

you couldn't upload and members couldn't log in 

this one and my current host is fantastic he is working with me to make my site pay for itself and being on boonex with you guys is great too 

because i get applications that i can add to the site I bought Rayz games and its great. 

Wow... thats a lot of sites to manage long term...!

I have had success with Dolphin sites, not just financially, but also in how the sites work for their purpose.

I dont have any generic non descriptive social network sites, they are all very niche. 

Either by content interest, or by locality. Nothing adult.

Dolphin does take a huge amount of thought in working out the best way to use it according to your intent.

Some other SN scripts, may offer maybe an easier 'out the box' site that appears to work well, but Ive found D to be the most versatile, and many members of the community have been very helpful in my journey.

Some suggestions I have found that help are....

Make sure your site is something you have a vision for. If you dont, it will be very difficult to ride through difficult times, and they WILL come, especially on launch...

If your site is about making money, make sure you have a business plan! 

Without a plan, it comes down to chance.

Keep it manageable. I run just a few sites, but have built loads that I never launched!

You will learn lots from building different styles of sites, how to tweak, change mods, adapt the script etc... but if you launch 20 sites, you then only have a few hours a week to put into each one. If one takes off, the rest will suffer.... Keep it manageable!

Be patient! 

If you're launching something that is meant to make you money, so you can live off it...

Then have something else on the go to back you up! That or set up properly as a business if you're going the investor route.

There's no magic formula for making money with Dolphin, but hopefully these things help!

It can be done, Im doing it as are others! 

Get a vision, make a plan, lots of time and hard work...

You can get there eventually.

 Anyone creating a site and expecting to make money straightaway will fail. 

boonex gives us the template we have to build on it and advertise the site. My thoughts are those of us that are new wont really see anything in the first year maybe 2. 

I have a fantastic website created by my host niceday hosting and i look on this site and i see more mods that i intend to add to the site as i go along

two mods ive bot from Rayz and Deano are fantastic and two others that i keep going back to is modzz and Esase i think their mods are fantastic i see Esase and Rayz has two mods i intend to purchase from this weekend (payday) its difficult to choose when two good mods have the same product im looking for lol. 

Devin id say look to earning in 2 years lol. 

Dawn

www.tgnsane.net free advertising and stores for anyone.