With our new start-up we have tried so many different ways to monetize. Eventually, I asked my friend Rachel if she could pull together top advertisers and we could have a Community Next::Monetize.

Some great companies are going to be there: Google, Yahoo!, Myspace, Imeem, Photobucket, Slide, RockYou, Flixster and more…

Also, I am looking forward to talks from Offerpal (we use them), Userplane (awesomeness) and Andrew Chen (my personal idol).

This is an invite only event, but I am giving my readers 5 free tickets here.

So how did Lefora get to 10,000 communities in just 3.5 months? I think it can be broken down into just 3 steps:

1. Solve a Problem
2. Develop alongside a real audience
3. Support the early community

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1. Solve a Problem
Research – Not just web stats, but go out and talk to potential customers. We talked to tons of communities and forums to learn their biggest pain points and how we could solve them.

2. Develop alongside a real audience
Sounds easy… and it is. We hit on multiple fronts, from directly inviting existing communities onto our software (it only takes a personal email), to SEOing the site for relevant keywords, to advertising our services for people looking to create a forum (we’re talking just $2-3 a day, no big ad budget), to acquiring a site that was going out of business – leveraging the branding they had left on their service (again this was on an extremely ‘low budget’). We did all this before ‘launching’ in the web2.0 blogosphere.

3. Support the early community
When you’re getting your first ‘real’ users but are still in ‘active’ development, it’s vital that you let them know there might be some kinks, but you are there to support them and need their feedback. We did this through a support forum, a ‘live chat’ widget, and personal emails. A live chat widget may be running on your desktop 8-10 hours a day, but early on, you’re only going to get interrupted for 15-30 min a day – and get some of the richest feedback and sales opportunities a website can offer.

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Our service didn’t require massive amounts of people to be on the network in order for it to be a sustainable service. It just had to provide tools for an existing or newly forming community, they didn’t care how many other ‘users’ or ‘friends’ were already on the site. Look how facebook started with such a small community (harvard), before jumping to other ivy league schools, before opening it up to all colleges.

Moving forward, the next wave of ‘social software’ is going to be services directed towards ‘communities’. From craft work communities to parenting to hiking to… Services that address the needs of communities will have many opportunities ahead.

Suggested Reading for any new startup: Steve Blank’s “The Four Steps to the Epiphany“.

link to photo

• MySpace used their ResponseBase email marketing list of 100 million+ people to send for first users.
• Facebook spammed all the Harvard email lists to get the first 2,000 users in a day.
• Hi5 used their previous dating site to send a considerable amount of traffic to
• Bebo used their original site BirthdayAlarm.com to have a huge user base to start with.
• Friendster and Orkut, I think started naturally and virally through a very limited invite system.

Take aways:
1- What can you do to get a relevant email list through non-illegal ways? Can you create a light weight system to garner targeted users? Consider having a landing-page and buying ads on Google…
2- Things don’t happen by magic. You have to light a match to start a fire.

what? The premier tournament for chess in Silicon Valley. Unlimited beer, prizes and fun!
why? Cause you either: like chess, like beer or fun (choose one or all).
who? Anybody that wants to. Discount given to teams.
when? May 5th from 6-8pm in Sunnyvale.
bonus? if you beat me in a match then you own me for 1 hour.

Register now

Okdork readers save 15% for the next few days: register here

This is a cool event in Los Angeles that will talk about the next generation of the web and media. Some of the speakers include:

- David Sacks, founder of Geni
- Alexis, founder of Reddit
- Robert Scoble
and many more…

The events always sell out. You should come, we’ll hang:) Register now

I love the people who attend, free red bulls we serve all day, open bar parties we are throwing Friday/Saturday and doing my best to make sure everyone gets something worthwhile out of the event. I think one of the biggest compliments is just the idea that people are flying in from other countries to attend. Insane huh? Why does this post feel like a diary entry? Anyways.

We are throwing a party in Sunnyvale, Ca this Friday Oct 5th. It’s open bar at Scruffy Murphys… I want you all to come. Free Irish car bombs, great people, etc…I can put you on the guest list if you are really going to come. Leave a comment if you can.

PS. Interesting enough Karen Hartline messaged me through okdork to help her with some marketing on Intervarsity. Some how I tricked her into working on Community Next… Maybe that’s a sign that you shouldn’t ask me for help:)

If any of the above interests you then you should come to my next thing: Community Next Platforms

Who should come and why?

* If you are building, curious or just want to be educated on the Facebook platform, Meebo, Google Maps and upcoming platforms you should come.
* If you like fun then you should come.
* If you are dying to know if people are making money and what are ways to fund and monetize these applications.
* If you want to win $10,000 in our 1 day code off where the person who’s app has the most users will win $10,000.

Register TODAY for a 15% discount. Only today. This event is 95.32% likely to sell out.

Link to funny twiistup video

Go register and use ‘okdork’ for $5 off. That’s enough for a burrito:)

If you can’t make it. Don’t worry we have an online chat room and live video feed at Community Next.

In the words of Borat it should be a “great success.”