@kenhui Sure, I run a couple. My platforms involve marrying sets of people together who are looking for a certain type of work.
It’s quite niche so for my privacy I won’t detail what that niche is, mainly as I’m in bed and can’t be arsed to make a throwaway.
But as a comparison, it’d be like a marketplace for bar owners, barmen/maids, but in a creative niche. It’s people who can offer work, those who need/want that work, and then some additional supplier types around that.
My platforms have a total of 22,000 members and put them as some of the largest in their industry.
The first platform was started a few years back. To get it started, I started off with 1 account type, the worker account (barmen/maid, to continue the example).
I approached around 500 people who were doing that work and offered them a page on the website. Initially, I controlled all the admin of those accounts - it let me understand what people wanted and needed.
I then created another account type, the work supplier (bar owner).
I posted hundreds of offers for work on websites like gumtree, Craigslist etc offering:
“Barmaid available”, “barmen available” etc. To any email I received, I’d wait 24 hours and send them a “oh sorry, this member is not available on this date - but do check out this website for more!”
Around 60% of those I’d email back would end up signing up within 6 hours of receiving the email, and I was getting a good amount of applications.
Over time, it spread through word of mouth.
I now have a second platform in a closely related niche. Think, waitress/waiters. On my platform, around 40% of the members who work in that first niche also have an interest in the second niche - but no platform existed in that niche.
I created a separate platform for that second niche, and created a notice to everyone who had indicted interest in that second niche, on the first platform that this second one existed.
The second one now has more DAU’s than the first one after just a few months.
The plan is to broaden out the amount of websites by niche. Understand what users on each platform are interested in, and then create websites/platforms in that niche.
You might say “well everyone on website 2 is the same as website 1”, but really, that’s not the case. You have some of the same / a bit of cross pollination but the users of the newly opened second niche website tell their friends in that niche, and it grows independently.
My advice is to not “fake it till you make it” - honestly, it’s fairly obvious when a website is full of fake users. Find a way of getting genuine people on the website, even if it’s you controlling every aspect of their account management initially where possible, just to get over that chicken and egg situation.
Hope that helps! Happy to answer any further questions.
