It’s been 4 months since I launced ventanon.com. It’s been a fun ride and I’ve learned a TON.
Ventanon.com (my little side project) has surpassed 200 fans on facebook, over 100 followers on twitter, has over 2,000 comments, and over 1,100 posts. Google Analytics data: 25k vistors with 87k pageviews (since 9/15). Of course it helped that the site was put on the front page of gorillamask (search for it, I’m not going to link it NSFW). The site was also mentioned on three morning talk shows: Richmond, VA; Albany, NY; and Denver, CO. I know about those because of referrer links, so who knows how many times it was mentioned without a blog link. I haven’t hardly had to do anything with the site since I launched it, but there’s a thriving community. The majority of traffic is from direct links now.
It’s actually amazing how people still cling to gaining some sort of identity even if the site is setup to be anonymous (there’s no login shown or allowed). You can watch people who have setup their identity on the site (Anonymoose, dude, 10101010, and many others). Â I have no idea who these people are and I don’t really care to.
I learned a lot getting this site going. Â First step is to make sure that you put together an expansive checklist. I missed the opportunity on adsense income with the gorillamask link because I hadn’t setup ventanon to be an allowed site in my adsense account.
When you’re running a site filled with anonymous people the less number of rules in place the more fun it is for you. I started out with 10 specific rules and even a wordlist that wasn’t allowed. I have since cut the rules down to 2 (no threats of harm or suicide and no names). I also found a wordpress plugin that auto corrects swear words to have ‘-’s in place of the middle of the word (purely for advertising). I didn’t do that until about 3 weeks ago and I have noticed an uptick in ad value.
Even though I didn’t think I needed to be told, you should NEVER FEED THE TROLLS… I’ve had a few and I lost the argument badly (the last of which caused the rules change).
If you’re going to advertise a site that doesn’t have a product to sell stay away from adwords. It’s worthless when you’re looking for repeat visits. Facebook ads are perfect for this type of site. You can direct people to the fan page where they can click on ‘become a fan’. I have had great success with this. The majority of my ad spend has been on different ad networks, but none have been worth it. $50 of advertising on Facebook with CPC’s of $.27 to $.75 have been very efficient. $10 of that advertising got me 43 fans out of 48 clicks on the ad.
I don’t need to continue advertising the site since the direct visitors are around 50 per day. Â However I’ll probably spend $10/month on advertising to get the number of fans on facebook higher (for higher click rates on the links). The other reason that facebook is nice is the demographic information given to advertisers. There is no other way for me to see demographics since I refuse to run pop-up surveys on the site and I don’t make anyone login.
There’s a ton of content on the site, and I’m just having fun watching it come together.
Twitter: @ventanon
Facebook: Vent Anonymously
