More members? Invite 'em in

Well, if it's more members who garden that you want we each tell one or more gardeners about this place. I've already told my sister in Albany about you and she was interested immediately.
As soon as she gets back from her pre-season vacation and gets back to her 30 acre farm and market garden she'll be joining and asking / answering on her work breaks.
Thanks for staying Dave's Garden - the name suits and there are a lot of very well known single names in the popular world
Okay Smilin32 what's your idea?
Not exactly a membership drive - more like an invite to an ongoing party. At Dave's of course.

This message was edited May 5, 2004 11:46 PM

At $15 for a whole year -- an economical birthday present, don't you think?

Or Mother's Day present, right Blooms???

And hey, if the person's b-day isn't for months and months (and they're not your DM), there must be something else to celebrate! Memorial Day, Dad's Day, Flag Day are all coming up, plus lots of graduations and isn't June the traditional wedding month? (Kinda weird and hard to wrap, but *some* newlyweds are after all starting new residences WITH GARDENS, right?)

signed, your DD ~spin!~

I just logged out and went to the plants database as a nonmember. The mention of "Daves garden" is small, unobtrusive, and lost. Why not post a description of DG, and an invitation to come over here and check us out? Give em a link to a couple of forums that are open to non subscribers, and after reading a few, it is only human nature they are going to want to put in their 2 cents worth.

Advertise yourself, Dave!

Well,

One of things I think would be helpful is to contact the people who are members, but not subscribers. There was something they saw initially in Dave's Garden that they liked, but perhaps not enough to warrant the $15 outlay. It would be time consuming, but we could start a campaign to send emails to them with an invitation and perhaps a 2 week free subscription to Dave's (of course, Dave would have to agree to that).

Contacting the non-subscribing birthday folks is a good way, too. I think a 2-week subscription would be awesome. Be like A*L: 1 week unlimited hours, LOL.

I think there should at least be a very visable invitation with link to the forums. A one week trial would be great too. I think that would hook most of them. They have to have an interest in gardening to be anywhere here.. gee just the computer help has been worth $15 to me...saved me some headaches for sure.
P.S.
Sure glad we are still DG :^)

Kimberly,

Great idea - the birthday folks. That would be an easy way to snag each person within a year.

Well, Dave may have had a change of heart, but I'd have to cast a dissenting vote on free trial periods (regardless of duration.) For one thing, there would be abuse, with people signing up for new usernames every two weeks, just to keep their free access. As an administrator I have plenty on my plate now, and analyzing IP addresses doesn't sound like much fun.

And one of the reasons we went to subscriber-only forums was to prevent pranksters (or worse) from using our forums to cause mischief. For those who were here during the "before and after" subscriptions were implemented, remember how things got a lot more peaceful here in the garden once people had to subscribe to post. That's not to say there aren't good people out there who don't subscribe - but I'm not sure that a free trial is what it would take to lure them in.

Now one thing that might work (I don't know about programming it) would be to let people see more of the threads - maybe allow them to read the initial post plus 1 or 2 or 3 replies...give a slightly bigger taste of what's in store for them if they subscribe.

Then again, we've gone from just 1 or 2 new subscribers each day to an average of 10 or more...so maybe we just need to keep doing what we're doing (and sending personal notes to welcome newbies is a wonderful way to make people get a feel for the genuine comraderie that makes DG so special ;o)

What about each of us subscribers submitting, should we feel led, a really nice 'plug' - lol - to our local newspapers? Most have gardening sites. That's a fast way to spread the word!

Maybe we could have like a T-Shirt design contest.
During the spring and summer (year round for me) i'm at home depot, walmart or lowes checking out the garden center.
Imagine the advertisement DG could get if we all had (of course bought) a tshirt that read something like:

I dig in Daves garden!!!!
www.davesgarden.com

just a thought



This message was edited May 6, 2004 9:03 PM

Or even just "I dig Dave's Garden" with a trowel and the "For Gardeners by Gardeners" motto. I can see it in my head, clear as day! When my hand's better, I'm going to draw it even if it's just for myself on a hat or something.

This message was edited May 6, 2004 9:15 PM

GW,

Put the web address on it, too. Great idea.

Heck...in the past two days I've mentioned DG to 3 people, and one of them was a newspaper reporter. They were all interested! (Course now, I have the gift of gab so ya'll need to meet with me someday and we'll have a "gift of gab gaining good folks to get going to Daves Garden get-together" meeting someday!)

Tenfour?

Good grief! :)

I'm with Shoe,DG does not need to advertise,there are gabbers like us out there,if I talk one plant to one person,the name DG is going to come up,and being in the Landscaping business,I bet it comes up 10 to 15 times a week.

I am always surprised to find how many people do NOT own a computer when I mention DG.

Edited to correct a big booboo; I had spelled 'DG', of all things, 'GW'.

This message was edited May 7, 2004 2:49 PM

I'm of the "Don't Fix it" group. And don't complicate Terry's computor work. Fifteen dollars is as cheap as most trial subs would be. Never mind that.
Just pleasant invites to come for coffee and info - not thundering hoards who just get lost before they're welcomed in????? just a thought. K I S S ........ Blooms

Ps. We (DD and I) wear some home printed stickers with DG's logo and motto to a fundraiser at Fullerton Arboretum to contact any other members that might be there... oh dear that's probably plaigarism ... Anyway the result was people thinking we were part of the question answering folks.

This message was edited May 7, 2004 12:16 PM

Blooms,

You say "it aint broke" and Dave is saying that he wants to improve things. No one is trying to complicate Terry's work. We're just tossing ideas around to try to increase the traffic and subscribing members. As for the acronym, there isn't anything simple about this site. It takes a lot of time and work to create something this wonderful. There are a host of people who have contributed a great deal of their efforts to making this site a success.

Oh, and I disagree with you that folks will get "lost" before they're welcomed. I know better. I know the kind of people on this site. They're kind and gentle and caring and willing to do nearly anything to help a fellow gardener. Not only that, but each new subscribing member gets welcomed to this site personally. No one should get "lost" here unless they do it on purpose.

I think that Blooms has a point - if we suddenly were dealing with 100 or more new subscribers a day (that would qualify as a "thundering herd" IMO) that would be (on one hand) a FABULOUS problem to have.

On the other hand, they might well find themselves "lost" as it would take people like Smiln (and others who try to send personal notes to each new subscriber) a tremendous amount of time to keep up with that volume of people.

The very thought makes me weary ;o) Happy, but weary, lolol.

We do need to toss ideas around - brainstorming is wonderful. I really hated to be the wet blanket on the free trial idea, but I didn't want that particular idea to get carried too far, since I have serious trepidations about its feasibility.