Archive for February, 2008
Monday, February 18th, 2008
We are opening up Ideas exchange board for SkaDate-powered sites. We are receiving active response to our feature suggestion section, that proves that there are people around willing to exchange insight and help each other.
We welcome anyone with a fresh SkaDate installation to take part in this action. In best scenario this can bring incredible value for webmasters and a vast source of information for us to see how we can make your life easier.
We are sure there is a lot to share. Things like our recent discussion of membership models are only a top of an iceberg. Promotion, spam issues, interaction stimulation, keeping members active, anyone?
Now, feel free to participate!
Posted in Products, SkaDate | Tags: community · discussion · exchange · forum · ideas
Friday, February 15th, 2008
I’m glad to announce that our company has established representative office in Czech Republic early this year in the form of limited liability company, Skalfa Europe s.r.o.. Registry number is 28224621, filed in C 133572. I’m adding new requisits to our “About” section.
We are happy to become closer to our European customers because our presence in Europe grows with years and becomes a substantial market to serve. This is a strategic move to pursue Skalfa international potential.
Thank you.
Posted in News | Tags: europe · representative · skalfa
Friday, February 15th, 2008
We have updated chuPPo Messenger application.
Update summary:
- Skin, smilies change support
- Custom languages support
- Usage statistics
- Usage tracking now based on successful IM sessions between members, not on simultaneous users online like before.
Log in to admin area. Now you can see a separate tab for Messenger with its own settings. Feel free to check and let us know if it works well for you.
Posted in News, Products, chuPPo | Tags: messenger · update
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
SkaDate
It’s that time of the product life-cycle again. We are planning next major upgrade for SkaDate, version 7. We are at the stage of gathering all the feedback and putting on paper what should be implemented.
We target the following 3 objectives with SkaDate 7:
1) Several major new features (groups, classifieds, etc.)
2) A lot of enhancements and optimization of the existing features. This is the neverending mission across the product existence history.
3) Performance optimization. We made some custom performance tuning for several big customers. Some of that can be implemented in the main product.
And of course, SkaDate 7 is not going to be a great thing without your suggestions. We found great value of communicating with customers, so new SkaDate can’t go without your contribution.
chuPPo
chuPPo applications do not have any versioning because of the hosted model and constant incremental development. You do not need to download anything, you just see your chat, IM, and recorder getting better, often on a daily basis.
Currently we are eager to hear from our audience what chuPPo can do for you.
Skalfa Boards
Now, for some action go to the new Skalfa Boards and let us know how we can make running your business easier. From now on this is the right place to give us some insight on improving our products.
Posted in News, Products, SkaDate, chuPPo | Tags: features · forum · ideas · suggest feature · support
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
Many people when buying a dating software think about its promotion and the different ways to earn money, of course. The common question I used to hear from customers was about membership. Should it be for free at the beginning? Isn’t it better to set a paid membership from the start? If the membership is for free, how should I earn? And so on.
There are tons of dating websites already, but as we can see they choose different business models. Let’s take a look at the most popular scenarios to understand how it works.
FREE START. Most dating web-sites start with free membership. Why? Profile database. The goal is to get as many people on the website as possible within a short period of time. The other point why it is reasonable – you put your new website online and people are joining and having fun for free while you have time to test the software, check hosting facilities, improve design, adjust admin settings, add necessary features, fix bugs if appeared. Once you are done with preparation you are ready for big promotion and to start earning money.
100% FREE. The example can be www.plentyoffish.com, which is completely free for everyone, no hidden fees and paid upgrades. The website earns on advertising. This is one model. With the right advertising strategy it can become a very profitable business.
JOIN FREE. Another way you can choose is partially free dating service. I call it “Join Free”, because usually joining (with some rare exceptions) is the only free service on such kind of websites. This is made to attract people at the beginning and shows the benefits of paid membership when they are already inside.
There can be combinations of the schemes mentioned above or some slightly modified examples, but basically the idea is like that. Which way to choose, you decide considering your target audience, promotion experience, knowledge of advertising tactics and professional preferences. Just make sure to take into consideration your clients’ perspective (think of client’s needs!).
Also, look at the article on the www.freedating-sites.com. I like the text, because the author gives some words of advice from the user’s point of view, which is very important to know before you make a decision about your marketing strategy.
So, which strategy do you choose for your website?
Posted in Marketing | Tags: income · marketing strategy
