GoMindful.com Problems & Solutions
I’m still caught up with many things right now but I just wanted to ask for some feedback.
The main problem the website has is the lack of new users. In the first two months I spent about 1000 USD on Facebook ads and also emailed 130 mindfulness related websites about this project.
One way or another this is how you probably ended up here. I was surprised that almost no meditation related blog wrote about this project. I run other unrelated websites and never expected that in this niche (mindfulness and meditation) most website owners would not link to a project like this.
The next idea was to use the video chat feature to create a small living community but unfortunately this did not work out either. I guess many people prefer to meditate in private (which is of course absolutely fine!) and / or there were simply too few people on the site to get something like the video meditation session started.
Right now I’m a bit clueless about what to do. Here are some options I consider.
1. Offer a paid mindfulness meditation course (and use the money I make from the course to advertise this site). Of course the community feature would remain free to still keep the site a place for people to exchange their thoughts about mindfulness.
2. Record some nice videos of landscape in different lengths (10 min / 20 min / 30 min) for people to look at while meditating. It might be a bit more of a passive meditation aid while sitting in the office for example and going for a little meditation break with one of these videos. (Not really sure how effective / popular this might be, its actually nothing that special in my opinion but kinda nice to have).
3. Creating printable flyers and other material for people to simply spread the message of “Go Mindful”. Basically make this website a place where people can get well designed mindfulness promotion material for free. (And then email mindfulness related blogs again, hoping they link to the project this time).
What do you guys think?
2 Answers
I stumbled upon your interview at evolvingbeings.com after watching Tom Campbell's interview. From there I jumped onto your website, then I found GoMindfull. Like myself, I believe there will be others that will find this community 'ramdonly', or not necessarily through adds.
My experience with online projects is limited, but I doesn't surprise me that other (supposedly) like-minded people didn't support this project. I found that even out of the mainstream, in areas and activities in which people are supposedly detached from ego and greed; some just aren't. You have done a wonderful job here (and at your other website) both design and content-wise. You share sound knowledge in a very accessible way and give free support and means of self-empowerment. The fact that some related websites didn't support this endeavor is actually a sign of insecurity, I believe. Here are some comments on your ideas (mind you that I'm just trying to help and am no expert):
1- A paid course might be a good idea, but if you're planing to run it online you might end up having the same problem recruiting enough people again. Meanwhile you don't decide whether or not you'll run this courses, you could ask for donations. Again, you have been doing a very good work at both sites and I think some of the people who will eventually have their lives improved will be keen to donate. Once you're open to try different solutions, you might as well try this.
Another idea that came to my mind, given that you're inclined to invest more of your time running courses, preparing flyers, etc., etc. is that you could prepare a course targeting meditation group leaders. This way you can always reinforce the community aspect of this site with extra material for those who have attended your course(s). The advantage I see is that 'forming' group leaders multiply our chances of reaching more members quickly.
2- Again, given that you're inclined to spend your time with videos, I think you could try a few good short videos to 'go viral'. These videos, in turn, could point to the website where people can download other videos (the ones you mentioned) and guided-meditations (perhaps another time to attract more members).
3- Creating extra material (flyers, videos, 'how-tos', etc) and making it available sounds like a good strategy to attract people. But these things might take some time to take off. If you're considering doing these things, it might be worthwhile targeting both mindfulness meditation and a group leader course (whether it would be free or not I don't know) re-directing these people to this online community.
With online projects there is lots of trial and error, I believe. However, this platform is very good, so I think as soon as we gather more members eventually other blogs will have to 'cover the story', reinforcing the picking up momentum.
As for my two pennies, I began meditating a short time ago, but have some friends who are attending a mindfulness meditation course, so I'll send them the link for GoMindful asking them to forward to their colleagues.
Thanks for making such a quality work available to all.
Cheers!
