The concept of charging users for an on-line community platform is quite a departure from the conventional preachings of the internet. ‘Freemium models’ are most often dismissed as an overreaching effort to increase revenues. But there are a few good reasons why I strongly feel a freemium model would work better.

One of the toughest challenges in building and sustaining an on-line community is establishing trust among users who have never met in the real world. Most users are wary of false identities and this inhibits the formation of trusted interpersonal relationships online. Paid account holders carry a certain level of authenticity and thus establishing mutual trust among such users gets easier.

Charging users creates a decently high barrier to entry and any barrier acts as a filter that ensures a certain quality in content. This also ensures that as a business owner you spend much lesser resource and time on moderating/flagging content to keep the place clean.

And last but not the least, users are not threatened by the possibility of the service shutting down due to unmanageable costs.

More revenues, lesser overheads and better trust – What more do we need to believe in this model?

It is not fashionable anymore to say that Web 2.0 is not as much about technology as it is about people. When this is an accepted truism of such degree, it is worth spending some time to analyze the dynamics of a such a model.

Before one builds a website (hence a service) on the assumption and wish that users will come forward to generate content, one needs to understand what it takes to drive those users to contribute content.

The following things need to be kept in mind while trying to build an active community on-line.

Is Your Service Different

During the whole thought process – while planning to start, build and maintain a new website- if ever this question sounded cliched within yourself, you are sure to come up with a non-starter for a service. Unless there is something unique in what you offer, how fair is it to expect people to spend their time in your platform to generate content, when either, they are already comfortable doing the same elsewhere (or) they do not see a new source of satisfaction in your service. This satisfaction as your uniqueness could be in any form for the user  expression, recognition, entertainment, social and business networking and so on and so forth.

For muziboo.com the users have overwhelmingly let it known that appreciation from fellow Patrons, through constructive criticism and comments, stands out as our uniqueness that drives them to generate and share content. It soon graduated to the next level, where rewards from fellow patrons and users have become financial – in the form of offers to sing/ perform in public platforms and functions and offers for teaching opportunities. It did not stop there; this culture came up with a pleasant surprise for the owner too. The establishment of this uniqueness started giving us rapid growth, as even people uncomfortable to sing/ or record any form of music started becoming active members to be able to give their appreciation and comments on the work of other people. The demographics of active users in muziboo.com is hence a healthy distribution among musicians who record and comment and non-musicians who are happy to enjoy and comment.

Initiating And Driving A Culture

Once you have decided on what should differentiate your service from similar others, you as the owner should become one of the patrons and initiate that culture among users, which will in-turn give the desired uniqueness to the service. As the first few hundred users go a long way in giving a face and feel to your service, it is vital to have given due thought about your uniqueness at a very early stage of conception of the service. Also, one has to be around constantly, driving it in the positive direction. Majority of users need handholding while you wait for them to acquire the taste of what you have to offer. This is the only way to bring in the kind of culture (that showcases the uniqueness) that you want to offer. Because if you leave it to the users to bring in uniqueness all by themselves or give them a good idea and not follow-up with efforts to involve them in building the same, the only guaranteed result is the establishment of a culture characterized by stagnation and inertia among the users. Do not forget that this need for handholding is not a reflection of the users intelligence if you can come up with something too exciting that it needs no handholding, then good for you  read George Oates’ blog to understand that community managers had to work hard to establish the uniqueness of Flickr

Here it is important to note that this uniqueness refers to a dynamic aspect of the site, which has the potential for exciting or enthusing users to contribute. It rarely or seldom refers to the uniqueness in technology that the site has adopted. And, more often than not, only while enjoying the uniqueness will the users be spending the maximum chunk of their time when logged in even if it is a little peripheral to the main service that you offer.

For muziboo.com, the main service is reflected in the tagline ‘Getting an Audience’. We worked on growing what we decided should be the uniqueness for the service – discussions and participation from the users regarding the generated content. It was per se peripheral as the main service is to be able to host people’s music. We took time to start threads where we explained (through diverse inputs again) how the user gains through active interaction when using the service.

So this initial push to uniqueness has to be from the owners. Unfortunately some websites after getting a whole lot funding, start operating on the premise that marketing the whole service will encourage people to register and generate content. It is not enough to sell the website, you have to sell the uniqueness of the website after establishing one in the first place.

Post Sign-Up

User assimilation is a slow painstaking process. The new user should immediately be made comfortable with an interactive interface. The business manifestation of this interactive interface phenomenon for a new Muziboo user is the ease with which she can get acquainted to the other members of the community. Another of those is a way by which he is presented and recommended with the appropriate links of content to browse.

Recognizing User

Most on line community members like recognition (rightly so) either for the content contributed or for participation. Couple of ways to do that would be featured articles and featured users. believe it – such energy and fun in those sessions.

Empowering Users

Empowerment is a great form of recognition and by doing the needful on that count, as an owner, you manage to stay away from ruffling yourself with too many responsibilities. By empowerment I refer to the minimal barriers that you put out for content acceptance. All generated content need not go through great levels of moderation or quality checks before being published. The motivation to contribute from the users end is highly dampened if they get spiked. For Muziboo empowerment was seen as a gesture of our trust on them, as owners we have proprietary strictures to deal with, and there are temptations among rogue users for piracy. Also if you shackle users with too many do and donts, you will have a lot of fire fighting to be done everyday as the service scales up. Democratize as much as possible. Let most things be decided on user votes and ratings in Muziboo even piracy related rejections are recommended by the users.

Having A Balance-So Much Democracy

In the nascent stages many users come forward with their ideas  both functional and business. Some will always be more relevant than the others, the others being the ones that do not align with your vision of the service. It is for the service owner to handle this embarrassment of riches without stepping on toes. You do not want to paint yourself in a corner while asking for ideas, because when not implementing those bonafide suggestions, you are likely to come across as rude or technically in-competent- both equally hurtful for your image.

Promoting Offline Meets

Promoting local offline meets is also a way to create stronger bonds among the community members. Posting updates about such events on Muziboo has even enthused users from nearby cities to come to our meets. What a way that for celebrating your community?

It Aint Easy (because if it is, it aint fun)

Does this need elaboration??

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