Marketing via EasyLoad – Stop.pk’s approach to increasing signups
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Social networks are cropping up a dime a dozen. After the wave of pakistani’s who have benefited Orkut and Facebook, some people have taken it onto themselves to get into the local scene and (maybe) profit from it. However, given the fact that you need critical mass of users before you can even begin to see any of the benefits, a lot of localized social networks die a slow death, wavering off into the void of the internet.
Stop.pk, a new entrant in this field, has come up with a new and novel approach! Use Easyload to get more signups. The idea behind it is, you get a number of ‘points’ on the site based on your activities. Activities include sign-up, complete profile, post content, invite friends and so on. Once you get enough points, you redeem them for easyload via their marketplace. You get Rs. 100 to signup and a further Rs. 180 if you get 1000 points or above. Not a bad move i’d say. For one thing, they’ve quantified the amount for customer acquisition!
So what are the pros and cons of this feature?
Well, the first con ofcourse is it can’t really scale well.. unless you have a way to ‘making’ those 100′s you’re spending in easy-loads. If you get upto 10,000 users, that’s 1 Million in easyload? And you cant really have a decent social network without that many people.
The first pro is that they’re setting up a staging ground for a brand new experiment. From where i stand, stop.pk has effectively made talktime into currency! If this site takes off, then i can only imagine the potential marketing campaigns that will go on with easyload as the reward.
What do you think? will it work?
10:05 pm
They need to capture the right type of audience, and even though the addiction to earn may become sticky even when they stop offering rewards, people will only stick if their service is good enough. Unfortunately, they need to spend more on their service (the web app) at the present time; it seriously is inferior in quality as of now.
It’s important to act smart and think out all aspects when you decide to go ahead with something of that kind.
11:34 pm
Just checked the site out… your calculations need correction. They are giving 100 points per signup, and you need 1000 points to claim 100 Rs. of credit.
So, 100,000 users is not a million in easyload, it is not even 1 Rs. in easy load until an individual manages to get 900 more points. So where do those points come from? I didn’t search for it but it did mention something called ‘public stops’ which is probably user-generated content – one point per stop. This means that to earn 900 points, you’ll need to write 900 stops, whatever they are – that is about 0.10 Rs. per stop, or lets say a page.
If they run ads on each such stop/page, that is a VERY cheap method of generating content/ad revenue, and they don’t need to worry about money if their SEO is any good.
If 95% of the people DONT generate content, they lose zero Rs. but gain subscribers.
Their website may be broken, but their model is certainly smart.
12:40 am
shohaib: thanks for clarifying, however isn’t the 1000 point rule on getting an additional Rs. 180 in easyload? their home page says Rs. 100 just on signup (a promotion running till 31st May)
1:09 am
The name is Sohaib ( I forgive you though
)
I am not entirely sure about the 180Rs thingee, just spent 5 minutes there (as I am trying to stay away from my cellphone and anything mobile), but let me see…
There’s some whining about not getting points here:
http://stop.pk/forums/display_topic/id_14/
and this page says >>> http://stop.pk/store/
Item:
100 Rs. Easyload for your Mobile
Price:
1000 activity points
Postage:
N/A
Available Until:
May 31st 2008
9:20 am
amaana is the pioneer of using this type of viral marketing in Pakistan, linking sign ups to their mobile payment service with airtime rewards.
4:24 pm
I guess I haven’t accessed the amaana website in quite some, because i didn’t think they were giving out airtime in exchange for signups :S
2:05 am
AOA Mansoor,
Thank you so much for you’re post regarding my site and the promotional campaign I am running at the moment. I am really encouraged to see your review and all the comments.
Before hitting “stop.pk†on Google, I had in my mind that somewhere on some Pakistani blog/forum, my site must be a topic of interest and I am glad that I have found one.
I would also like to mention that, yours is the first site having my personal comments about my experiment. So far we have made around 2500 sign-ups in only 4 days and managed to get an invitation list of around 15000 users. Content stats are also very encouraging even excluding the sign-ups*5 SEO friendly pages which comes with every sign-up as default with their basic info.
I believe that it would only be a matter of time when most of the Internet users of Pakistan will have a STOP at STOP.pk.
Please wish me luck and let me know if you have nay question.
Thanks!
Touseef Ikram
11:15 am
tauseef: thanks for coming over and presenting your views. the numbers you are telling us are a real inspiration and though i think you can work on certain aspects of the site to make them better, over time it would be a great addition to the pakistani social scene.
plus, any site which would take away revenue from foreign sites like orkut and facebook and bring them to pakistan are always a welcome sight!
3:57 pm
This is just an update.
On day 20th of our launch we had passed 10,000 users milestone and as of writing this on 22nd day we have following stats.
Total Members: 11940
Members Online: 180
Total Online: 1227
Insha Allah it will only get better with the passage of time.
I am thinking to get a presee release out if that can create more awareness and help us get more exposure. Can you guys please help me out with it? Do you have any experience with writing and releasing a PR?
4:06 pm
More stats:
So far we have managed to generate 450,000 pageviews with around 55,000 visits by 32,000 unique visitors. If you want to have a case study on my site, I can give you access to my google analytics account.
Well, on jun 3rd we were in top 500 sites accessed by Pakistan according to Alexa and we are getting up daily by atleast 50 points. I hope by the time they will update it we will be on a much better position.
7:57 pm
Just an update. We have just crossed 15,000 users about an hour ago. This is day 26th and I am really happy to see the stats.
7:37 pm
Hello friends salam.. Friend i am the user of STOP .. Realy it is a very nice and very good site.. i sure when a person came here he must like and appreciate the site.. Mr. Tauseef who is the Master mind of that site is very geniouis. and another person Rashid is also very co-operative and good working boy.. another person Akmal is also doing very well.. in nutshell STOP is very best site.. you guys must visit that site.. ok bye Good wishes for the site.. bye Have a nice stay there
3:59 am
Touseef, do you mind giving me a demo account where I can see all this activity to see what makes this fun?
2:48 pm
thanks Osama for your interest.
You can use this account.
user: demo
pass: demo
BTw, I know there must be a lot of improvments to be made and I would really wait for your feedback.
Touseef
12:54 pm
plz send me a card of ufone plz
my cell no is
03335387969
6:53 pm
Rizwan made me laugh! Thanks Rizwan!
5:49 pm
hello rizwan just joing http://www.stop.pk. Make a profile there. Earn cash points and the u will be able to got your easyload. Just join stop.pk..
12:08 pm
i love pakistan
9:18 pm
i love you pakistan
8:38 am
hey guys no one is master miond .. stop.pk is using dis script
http://www.phpfox.com
and dere are more than 5000 sites on internet like stop.pk
i m giving u some siotes name
1.www.snehah.com
2.www.frooler.com
3.gamerbio.com
4.www.pakfacebook.com
5.http://www.greenbin.com/
6.http://www.iclatinos.com/
7.myarcadefriends.com
live demo from official site
http://www.phpfox.com/konsort/live-demos/
7:04 pm
Rashid I am wondering what has made you write this post? or who is talking about being smart or something over here. There are tens of thousands forum on vbulletin in world and in thousands in Pakistan yet no one made any comment on the framework ever. STOP.pk is fox or not that is not the thing to discuss, it is the way it is being marketed and the time frame it has been put forward to and believe it or not, so far over 3 million pak rupees have been invested on this project so far and that does include the valid licenses of every piece of code we had to buy/outsource and develop and yet we are not anywhere close to being a cashflow positive company.
and BTW, we are just about to cross 43,000 members today in few hours. And this is only a 4 month progress.
3:04 pm
dis is $300 script and dnt try to be smart ….
see dis is also on phpfox apnispace with more than 2 lak members members if u r showing ur 43000 members dere are so many big website on dis planet ,
and ur name is chodry on phpfox forum
5:29 pm
9:11 pm
i am junaid from pakistan.
education F/A.
liking sports Cricket.
like poetry..stories….and….treasure.
from islamabad.
6:17 pm
u guys showing fake data for online users
ur real online user is here
total user = 50,477
online = 26
http://stop.pk/public/browse/mode_online
out of 50477 members only 26 members online… think about it mr admin01
dnt waste ur time to increase members but most important thing is how many members are active.
10:58 pm
hey Altaf, we are not telling any lies. We dont need to. That online count we diplay on main page also includes guests. So it is different than online members count.
6:54 pm
tauseef bhai aapki site mashallah se bht fast hai ye aap kaunse server use kr rahe hain maine bht site dekhi hain isi tarah ki lekin sab slow hoti hain lekin ye nahi hai
12:54 pm
i am a user of Stop.pk myself…….
i would just say ppl who think stop.pk is fake or telling lies, join it for once and start using it……..
there is no use talking about things you havnt experienced isnt it……
and earning points to get easy load is fair enough……..u cant expect anything to be free in this world, would u????
Stop.pk is doing a great job……
“Time is Valued” and what i love the most is that the forums are filled with “Quality Topics” giving you some quality time…….
And one more thing…..its the personal touch of The Stop.pk creator that most counts……you dont see the makers of orkut in your groups or forums……but on Stop.pk the Admins are always there to reply and help you out……and YOUR SUGGESTIONS ARE ALWAYS WELCOMED AND VALUED……
Its a Family on Stop.pk
5:41 pm
whoever you are Mr. touseef or Ms. Aisha,
PLEASE GET A LIFE!
I wonder how GW is allowing such kind of language on their blog. AAnd I am 100% sure that it is the same poster who made the above 2 posts. just look at the time difference. GW, please wake-up.
thanks!
1:57 pm
thanks for deleting those comments
11:28 am
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12:54 pm
well.. stop.pk is an excellent welll ranked site ! and its grownup by his benifit for the user like easyload !
5:09 pm
They’re spamming my INBOX with requests to join a pornographic chat site.
For that I hope that they see a mushroom cloud forming over Islamabad as a gift from their friends in Mumbai.
How’s that for a reply?
7:17 pm
Woah Jeff….
There’s lots of good people in Isb man. And btw the StopPk guys are in Lahore I think
7:28 pm
@Osama
There’s a lot of good people in Lahore too, but I’m sure Jeff doesn’t mind the collateral damage as long as his INBOX spam stops, so we must comply with his wishes, we have to be WITH him, not AGAINST him!
Psst Jeff – come this way please…
8:41 pm
Jeff, what? Are you getting such emails from stop.pk? did you report at our site?
I mean in no way we could allow spam to be sent from our site and we have proper SPF and PTR records added as well. I am confused how this could happen?
please can you explain a bit further?
1:11 pm
hi friends i’m in dis so plz til me how make free esyloda?
1:15 pm
hi friends i’m new in dis so plz til me how make free esyload?
10:17 pm
HA GUYS I M FIRST TIME USING THIS SITI PLEASE HELP ME HOW I WORKED 4 STOPPK
5:57 pm
Hi Gyz!!!!!! This is Sonu DJ. Please tell me that how can i get free easily load???
3:23 pm
this is the best experience of mine.
give me thge easy load of 100 now.
3:32 pm
my number is 0333-7572491.
5:43 pm
how can i get free credit?
1:53 am
I am visiting this site very first time, I liked it, plz help me and join me,
1:36 am
A geat work done at stop.pk. really nice and clean site, high rank, and good amount of traffic as well. well done.
6:16 pm
Comments on this topic are closed.
9:04 pm
Well all stats are fake here regarding stop.pk even they are showing 70,000 registered members but only 200 to 300 use to online daily which is a shame….
The dark side of this website is non professional STAFF members, who even dont know how to give support but they are always ready to fight with members just to show that they have power to BAN. And after these things they enjoyed in chat room that “waah yaar maaza ayaa aaj toh es member kai sath khoob khaila” All staff members are not like this but top 3,4 are like a crap of the site.
These are Rajpoot, Ayesha007, Tabanian, Foosa and fahad ultrasonic. They are very rude with members and misbehave with just for nothing thats the reason stop.pk members have left the website after registration. And because of these staff member different members are developing their own forums and they are successfull like dostee.pk and weyouth.pk
both are the result of Stopk.pk staff bad attitude. But the admin(touseef) is sleeping….
But important thing is that the great ADMIN Touseef has no ability to run a business thats why he still have that non professional peoples in staff and he dont know whats going on with his business.
He would be good in technical side but he has no administration skills to handle or control the staff members and he use to scared with his RUDE staff members that if they left what will happened… but he dont know if they stays more what will be happen…. his registration would be 70 lacs but if online members are only 200 then he should close this business.
Admin never listen to any member he just have blank faith on his staff members who are destroying the web site day by day.. Mr.Touseef if you want to run business you should not be emotional… try to hire professional peoples who can run your portal otherwise your condition will be like Pakistani economy it is bcos all the Ministers are non professionals so how they can run a country?
And jis jiss nai bhe yahan stop.pk ke tareef kee hain wo sub staff members hain…Sharam bhe nahi aati in logo ko apnai aaib chupanai k liee jhoot per jhoot….
12:20 am
i want easyload of 100 Rs. for Zong. Plz Send Me…!!!
10:34 pm
Well, Freaker thanks for the lovely comments, really enjoyed them. And yes i have a hint about how you are…so i wont go in detailed discussions with you.
Thanks!!
10:35 pm
nadeem riaz…its because of ppl like you…pakistan isnt progressing