For the last 6 months I've been working on building my first startup. It was finally ready and launched last month. I'm trying to build a community to help people classified ads via video. I believe if everyone can watch videos of what people are selling they can save so much time traveling from place to place to check out the product. They can enjoy watching classified ads videos without leaving the comfort of their homes. It's like craigslist but by videos instead of posting photos. It's been about 1 month, we have about 200 members signed up but not many actually uploading videos. I'm thinking of running a contest to encourage them to upload their unwanted things lying around their houses. Are there any other ways for them to start uploading videos? Plus how can I get more users to join a site like this. I'm a bit new on marketing for a startup website and looking forward to learn from you guys. Please review my website and provide me some tips. If you don't like anything about the site please let me know so i can fix it to better serve users. Thanks http://www.123exchanges.com
Publish your description in social networking sites like facebook, mspace, twitter & alike. his is a good method for publishing.
SEO is always a good route to take. Contents will do wonders for getting more members, but the contest has to be something that would be worth their time. The best way to figure out if the contest is worth their time is by asking yourself would it be worth your time. You just have to keep having patience. Good things happen to those who are patient! Wish you the best! God bless, William Veasley
I also run a site where I encourage people to sign up and share videos, and I had a rough idea for a giveaway of my own. Maybe you could provide an incentive or a little token of appreciation for everyone who uploads a certain number of videos. The videos would have to be a certain length, etc. Like I said, the idea is a work-in-progress, but it's something you might be able to tailor to your needs...
I've seen sites where you could only claim items if you put a certain number of items up- this may be a good idea for you? I also think running some sort of contest would work well. I'm assuming you've already recruited your friends (do that, if you haven't) and ask them personally to put items up.
maybe you can try to promote your site using facebook.... you can create event at facebook to notify yourfriend about your website activity...
Contests are a great way, everyone loves winning. As for promotion, facebook, twitter and other social networking sites are a vast way of advertising, do it yourself our hire it out.
You need to pay people, in whatever way, to participate. Your traffic is so small that anyone selling their stuff via your site has a such a minute potential audience compared to craigslist/eBay.