Always thinking

What is more?

I am in contradiction. At one hand, I kept receiving good signals from market that group event for singles is right direction to go, on the other hand, there are not enough signals from market that people will do it from groupmingle.com; I have set up a meetup group on meetup.com, and getting 10 memebers already within 48 hours of creation. I am paying $19 monthly to meetup.com to maintain this group, while my goal is to use that to guide people to groupmingle.com and using word of mouth more effectively on our site. However I have to say that meetup.com's event feature is much more powerful than groupmingle, the only reason that I think groupmingle will win is its focus on singles market, maybe that is the only reason good enough to be the winner. I do have that feeling.

There are major differences between meetup and groupmingle on event feature.
1. Business model: meetup charges organizer a monthly subscription fee to organize a meetup group, which may have offline event; Obviously, this won't encourage everyone on meetup to create a group. Groupmingle wants as many people as possible to start a dating event, so we don't charge organizer for creating an event; there is no concept of creating an event group. Anyone can start a paid or free event; Our platform enables singles to apply to paid event through paypal. To be honest, I don't know if this feature will keep user away. Meetup also has payment built in, but it's an option for user either pay through paypal online, or do it offline at the event. I need to think more about it.
2. Promotion tool, I have to say that meetup has terrific promotion tool that groupmingle does not provide. So far, I only allow user to invite friends and people nearby. There is no other web2.0 feature such as embedded code;
3. Speed of people joining groupmingle group on meetup is faster than that on groupmingle.com itself. I am using the discounted pricing strategy to attract people to our site; But, without a good event, this has not worked.

Speaking of good event, I finally got a few very position replies from people who own fabulous home dinning room and kitchen, party area where we can host our flagship events. We have a few people in both SF and LA area ready to roll. I hope we will gain some attention through this strategy.

All being said, it will be a longer journey than I hoped. With the end of free supporting, I will need to have funds to continue the effort. No one said the first venture would be easy.

posted by Road less travelled @ 11:28 PM