Author Topic: A Request For Your Help - help us spread the word! (Read 27,465 times)

mouser · « **on:** November 09, 2005, 03:55 PM »

DonationCoder.com needs your help to spread the word about our site this month, and about our Novemeber fundraiser and celebration!

We've come so far in the last 8 months and we need to find a way to let people know about our site who haven't heard of us before. We don't advertise and we don't have connections with people in high places - we depend on our members to help us spread the word about our site.

Will you please take some time today to help get out the word about our site and our fundraiser?

If you're a member of another forum - maybe this is a good time to let your friends know about us, and what you like about our site, about our special giveaways this month, and about our software (we just release a new version of Screenshot Captor today, and more updates are coming!).
If you run (or know someone who runs) a website or if you have a blog or something, maybe this is a good time to mention our site and tell people about what you like about our site?
Do you know a site that might be willing to post an announcement about DonationCoder.com or about our special fundraiser? Please email them and tell them why you think they should.
We're finally starting to incorporate additional authors into the site - this is a big step for us torwards becoming a real community of coders and users, and I think it signals a real evolution of our site.. Do you know of a technology site that might be interested in a submission about us? Won't you please take the time to submit such an entry?
Maybe you could include a link to our site or fundraiser page in your signature on other forums for the remainder of the month?
If you are a fan of one of our programs but you've never written a review of it on the software announcement pages, now is the perfect time!
Maybe you have another idea?

Thank you.
-mouser / donationcoder.com

brotherS · « **Reply #1 on:** November 09, 2005, 06:15 PM »

I did put
www.donationcoder.com - lots of nice freeware/donationware!
in my email signature, a few guys already visited the DC site for the first time because of this

(they told me)

Also, I told folks I know on IRC, ICQ and AIM about the site and November fundraiser.

Lets hope you'll get lots of donations to finance the new server and maybe a few more tools that you need for coding or site development.

brotherS · « **Reply #2 on:** November 09, 2005, 06:20 PM »

Hmm, just had an idea... what about you create one or two internal pages (for those that are interested) that just link to the main page and the specials page?

Everyone taking part could than spread 'his' own URLs and it would be better possible to track it! I like the idea

jpfx · « **Reply #3 on:** November 10, 2005, 12:17 AM »

how about making donationcoder one of these userbars.
I might feel inclined to advertise (uk sp!) in other forums that suffer my shining witt!

mouser · « **Reply #4 on:** November 10, 2005, 12:25 AM »

great idea - i will make one and if anyone else with better graphics skills wants to give a try that would be nice too. this is where a new logo would come in handy

ps.
jpfx that sleeping cat ascii art has to be one of the best (zen-like in its simplicity) ascii art drawings i've ever seen.

clif_notes · « **Reply #5 on:** November 10, 2005, 12:56 AM »

Howdy all,

Hi Mouser, write up a nice little intro for DC and I'll put it in my newsletter next week.
I'll do what I can to help out.

mouser · « **Reply #6 on:** November 10, 2005, 01:01 AM »

thanks cliff, i'm going to do just that - much appreciated.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #7 on:** November 10, 2005, 01:39 AM »

Here are a couple of bars ... one large, one small - feel free to use them ...

clif_notes · « **Reply #8 on:** November 10, 2005, 05:33 AM »

Excellent work Carol. I'm assuming you designed them?

brotherS · « **Reply #9 on:** November 10, 2005, 05:46 AM »

Quote from: CarolHaynes on November 10, 2005, 01:39 AM

Here are a couple of bars ... one large, one small - feel free to use them ...

I like the smaller one, could you maybe add another one saying "great software for a great price - YOU name it!", so that YOU is the only text with caps there?

And maybe one with blue instead of black background?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #10 on:** November 10, 2005, 10:46 AM »

How about this one ... sorry I neglected to keep the editing version and I forgot which font I used!

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** November 10, 2005, 10:50 AM »

i've added carol's imags to the banner collection:
http://www.donationcoder.com/About/PromoUserBars/

I'd be happy to host more -
heres the photoshop template for mine -> http://www.donationcoder.com/About/PromoUserBars/dcuserbar.psd
but feel free to make your own in your own style with your own amusing text and i'll add them.

mouser · « **Reply #12 on:** November 10, 2005, 10:52 AM »

If anyone belongs to any user groups, or subscribes to any mailing lists -
now would be a great time to let them know about our software, our site, our giveaway, etc.

mouser · « **Reply #13 on:** November 10, 2005, 02:38 PM »

Two different press-release type things...

If you know a website/mailing list/forum/tvshow/magazine/etc that might be interested in something like this, please do pass it along (even better would be to personalize it to include your thoughts and words).

1) I wrote this one to c|net news.com:

Quote

I'm writing to tell you about a site we've been running for almost a
year now with little notice from the mainstream internet.

Donation-based software often seems like the ugly-stepchild of the
software industry. We're trying to revive it as a viable approach to
ethical software.

We've got tons of professional quality freeware and we're trying to
focus on the building of a community of software developers and
software aficionados who are willing to support them.

I hope you can take a look at our site and see if it's something worth
doing a story on. So far our freeware software is extremely popular,
but the broader spirit and message of our site had been hard to
communicate, just because it's something people aren't used to.

2) i wrote this one to betanews.com news:

Quote

"DonationCoder.com Fundraiser and Software Giveaway"

After almost a year of operation, the donation-based software site
DonationCoder.com is holding its first fundraiser.

To celebrate the event, and the move to a faster server, throughout the
month of November DonationCoder.com will be giving away tons of software
including VmWare, Website Watcher, WinRAR, BeyondCompare, BB FlashBack Pro,
Camtasia Studio, SnagIt, TheBat!, and more, and is providing up to 50% off
a wide variety of shareware programs [a donation of some amount or honorary
membership is required].

In addition to the software giveaway, DonationCoder.com is marking the
occasion by releasing new reviews, new freeware programs and major upgrades
to its most popular freeware programs like Process Tamer, Find+Run Robot,
URL Snooper, and Screenshot Captor.

DonationCoder.com is an effort to build a community of programmers and
software aficianados, funded entirely by voluntary user donations.

http://www.donationcoder.com

rrtwister · « **Reply #14 on:** November 10, 2005, 03:37 PM »

I found another small way to help spread the word. I was talking to a tech on my ISP's national help desk about a browsing issue at a friend's house. Some sites were loading extremely slow. We decided to pull a few sites at random, so guess which site i pulled at first? DonationCoder of course. The tech was pulling the same sites and she was impressed with the site and was bookmarking it to dig thru later. She completely liked the entire idea behind the site and was going to pass it on to a couple of other techs.

The point to my rambling is that promotion of the site is so easy and it does not have to be forced on anyone.

nigelfraser · « **Reply #15 on:** December 08, 2005, 08:30 AM »

might I suggest that users add the relevent details as an e mail signature and download the above gif to their homepages

brotherS · « **Reply #16 on:** December 08, 2005, 09:04 AM »

Quote from: nigelfraser on December 08, 2005, 08:30 AM

might I suggest that users add the relevent details as an e mail signature

That's what I'm doing

@mouser: could you maybe create a few redirect URLs for every user interested in this? Like http://www.donationcoder.com/free10152 which would simply redirect to http://www.donationcoder.com/ but track how often it has been used? I'd like to use a few of those those URL in different places, would be interesting to see which of them (and where!) work and which not!

BobTravis · « **Reply #17 on:** December 25, 2005, 03:41 PM »

This is such a cool way to get donations. Like here, this is free, we would appreciate a donation but we'll only ask twice and if you still can't afford to donate you can use it anyway and you will be permanently activated at that point. Well with an invite like that, unless if I was a kid getting a dollar per week allowance, there is no way I could pass by a chance to help if doing so was at all within my range of possible. (And if you use PayPal you don't have any excuse at all.)

And, oh yeah, I only donated a tad over 20 and mouser was so appreciative. I was really tickled because it seemed like so little for such a great program, but it was all i could afford that that particular moment; but mouser was appreciative anyway and i didn't feel like such a miser anymore.

Baseman · « **Reply #18 on:** January 01, 2006, 07:16 PM »

I certainly will put a link to other Forums...I'm impressed with the banners they are cool and eye catching...

Beng · « **Reply #19 on:** July 27, 2006, 10:19 PM »

great idea.

stansrailpix · « **Reply #20 on:** August 16, 2006, 02:45 AM »

I just put a link to this site in my store at;

Stan Railpix http://www.cafepress.com/stans_railpix

Mizraim · « **Reply #21 on:** October 04, 2006, 10:48 PM »

Quote from: jpfx on November 10, 2005, 12:17 AM

how about making donationcoder one of these userbars.
I might feel inclined to advertise (uk sp!) in other forums that suffer my shining witt!

I think this is a good idea. I would definately use one in my sig.

app103 · « **Reply #22 on:** October 05, 2006, 01:08 AM »

or you can use this in your signature, like I do at other forums:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/donationcoder/whfv.gif

mahesh2k · « **Reply #23 on:** August 21, 2007, 03:35 PM »

I already spread the word for Suggestafix.com Site.Yet to do with protonic.com