Do you still remember the 250K AED cash prize video competition last 2007? A blown up ads around UAE to advertise their contest which is “Upload Your Video & Win”. Yes! That’s right they are the one, shooftv.com.
Where are they now? Do they still exist in the internet? Is there any progress on their website? Have they become successful running their own user-generated video sharing website? Well…Unfortunately not. Shooftv.com, What went wrong?!
Shooftv.com owned by Arab Media Group was launched in April 2007. According to their website’ shooftv.com is a user-generated, with content coming from users all over the Middle East, making it the first of its kind in the region.
When they started their venture, shooftv spend more than 250,000 AED in their prizes and advertisement around the region to promote their newly website, in their first to third month they received a massive numbers of traffic across the region and I beleive that is because of the offline advertising and the website gain popularity in just couple of months.
Because of the massive traffic they are getting from the internet, after the 250K AED competition in the same year they launched a competition during the holy month of Ramadan in which participants sent in Islamic video clips in which winners won cash prizes of up to AED 30,000.
Not so long, user lost interest on the website and their website traffic decreased rapidly which I believe it’s the cause of the hype offline advertisement throughout the region which is a wrong move.
But hey! They still exist and still operating after a short progress on their website since they launched and after that, this past months they receiving not more than 200 unique visitors a month since September 2008 according to the web analytics compete.com and alexa.com. and not only that, the most terrible traffic numbers that they had is on December 2008 which only has 8 Unique Visitors. Not even worth a cent in PPC. Wow! That’s not even close monetizing their website in 3 years to cope up the money that they spent on their project. But hey again! They have lot of money to spend anyway. Who cares…
If I am the head of the project what I would do is to test and run the website first for 6 months if there is a potential on it, before spending huge amount of money for the sake of having website traffic without knowing that it will work. And here are the other things that I would do.
Check the competitor’s website like Ikbis & D1g and list what is the difference of the website to shooftv, basically review dubai websites like what I’ve done in Top UAE English Newspaper. In that case if the competitor’s are missing something in their website in any form like usability, accessibility and even a call to action then there’s a chance for shooftv to add that in the website.
What’s behind the competitor’s website success story? I will do a research like what they did, their future plan, if they do online advertising, do they participate in any social events, forum, community or networking to promote their website then I will make a pattern to shooftv website and when I compile all the list that I have, I will apply that in the website and viola now there should be something in common right!, the next thing is to test the website if there is any outcome on the list that I applied on the website.
Optimize or SEO! C’mon of course I will do this, it’s my forte! Rather than spending a lot of money in offline advertising to get people interest and to get starter traffic on the website, I will optimize the website throughout the search engines and leverage the power of organic listing.
…and a lot more which I think if I’m going to list them here you will get bored reading my blog post which you nearly is. Just remember whenever you’re doing projects always Analyze, Optimize, Test and Monitor your website so that you have something to compare with whenever it needed. But if all of this doesn’t work I suggest shift to different ventures unless you still have 250K ++ to spend in the project, well why not!..
For me having online projects is already risky because I already spend a lot of time doing a lot of things like researching, analyzing, and monitoring the project which I am still not sure if it will work or not, but spending 250K++ it’s like a 1 in a million shot for me having chance to spend that in an online project.;)
How about if you are a part of the shooftv troops. What would you do if you have 250k AED to spend in an online project? Or what would you suggest to make their website to be in a position where they can have a lot of web traffic which they can maintain and have a chance to compete with the other competitor’s?
As for shooftv.com I hope you can still “get back on track and bring the traffic back”:)! Continue and learn from your mistakes that you’ve done in 3 years and please don’t spend much in offline advertising if your projects are online unless you are so lucky to have the domain horse.ae sold in 6,000,000 AED!
Shooftv.com, What went wrong?!
Where are they now? Do they still exist in the internet? Is there any progress on their website? Have they become successful running their own user-generated video sharing website? Well…Unfortunately not. Shooftv.com, What went wrong?!
When they started their venture, shooftv spend more than 250,000 AED in their prizes and advertisement around the region to promote their newly website, in their first to third month they received a massive numbers of traffic across the region and I beleive that is because of the offline advertising and the website gain popularity in just couple of months.
Because of the massive traffic they are getting from the internet, after the 250K AED competition in the same year they launched a competition during the holy month of Ramadan in which participants sent in Islamic video clips in which winners won cash prizes of up to AED 30,000.
Not so long, user lost interest on the website and their website traffic decreased rapidly which I believe it’s the cause of the hype offline advertisement throughout the region which is a wrong move.
But hey! They still exist and still operating after a short progress on their website since they launched and after that, this past months they receiving not more than 200 unique visitors a month since September 2008 according to the web analytics compete.com and alexa.com. and not only that, the most terrible traffic numbers that they had is on December 2008 which only has 8 Unique Visitors. Not even worth a cent in PPC. Wow! That’s not even close monetizing their website in 3 years to cope up the money that they spent on their project. But hey again! They have lot of money to spend anyway. Who cares…
If I am the head of the project what I would do is to test and run the website first for 6 months if there is a potential on it, before spending huge amount of money for the sake of having website traffic without knowing that it will work. And here are the other things that I would do.
…and a lot more which I think if I’m going to list them here you will get bored reading my blog post which you nearly is. Just remember whenever you’re doing projects always Analyze, Optimize, Test and Monitor your website so that you have something to compare with whenever it needed. But if all of this doesn’t work I suggest shift to different ventures unless you still have 250K ++ to spend in the project, well why not!..
For me having online projects is already risky because I already spend a lot of time doing a lot of things like researching, analyzing, and monitoring the project which I am still not sure if it will work or not, but spending 250K++ it’s like a 1 in a million shot for me having chance to spend that in an online project.;)
How about if you are a part of the shooftv troops. What would you do if you have 250k AED to spend in an online project? Or what would you suggest to make their website to be in a position where they can have a lot of web traffic which they can maintain and have a chance to compete with the other competitor’s?
As for shooftv.com I hope you can still “get back on track and bring the traffic back”:)! Continue and learn from your mistakes that you’ve done in 3 years and please don’t spend much in offline advertising if your projects are online unless you are so lucky to have the domain horse.ae sold in 6,000,000 AED!