Harmonizing and monetizing

I’m always a fan of the un-conference conference, and Noah Kagan’s Community Next did not disappoint. It was complete with a Hawaiian lunch luau, Bong Vodka giveaways (good luck getting that through airport security), looking down on money-focused ventures (”do it for the love or go home”) and engaging speakers who left their sales pitches and boring Powerpoint slides at home (with just a few exceptions).

Stand-outs included interesting demos of Say Now from Nikhyl Singhai (MySpace’s most popular resident, Tila Tequila, leaving you a voicemail) and loopt, from “gray-haired” Mark Jacobstein (want to know how many of your friends are within a five-mile radius of your local watering hole via GPS-enabled cell-phones? No problem!); and entertaining presentations from the Threadless dynamic duo, Jeffrey Kaimikoff and Jake Nickell. (Their mantra: “Your Project is not Good Enough!”)

Indieclick’s Heather Luttrell was afforded a “full 15 minutes” of the one-day conference to discuss the four-letter word of all un-conferences—monetization.   Heather did a nice overview of the top-ten myths and misconceptions about growing and monetizing the web. “Number 5: Our audience won’t accept advertising.” I for one, am sold on monetizing the web.

She also encouraged adding links around ads that encouraged visitors to sign-up to premium memberships…thus eliminating ads and driving revenue through a subscriptions channel. (Better than the links that say, “click on me and support my site.”)

The team from Dogster, the dog-lover’s community site, shared its “Impact Horizon” approach to corporate development. The strategy included all facets of the business, from Human Resources down to the product itself. During the infancy of your company, you want to think small. You should expect to see results (or impact) from your efforts in weeks, not months, when you’re first starting out. Lesson: Don’t take on a project that won’t give you returns in the short term.

Think small to get projects off the ground and make contact; don’t swing for the fences, at least not early on.

Community Next seemed to attract an equal mix of attendees who had the next niche community site brewing in their minds and hearts (”It’s like Facebook, but for church-goers”) or products that community sites can use to keep themselves “sticky” (Say Now and loopt.)

Next year, let’s do it for two days and give monetization even more love.
 

Other Community Next coverage:

• Somewhat Frank
• Laughing Squid
• Listen Out Loud
• POP PR Jots

—Marc Levin, Senior Marketing Maven