[POLL] If you've joined in the last 2 years, how did you find us?

[ZipReg]

Hey guys I just wanted to do an informal poll on how you found this place if you've been here less than 2 years or so.

A while back I set up some BTC related websites as landing pages with titles like "Casascius 1 BTC 2011 Error Coin" that showcased the collectibles section here in an attempt to generate traffic and point that traffic here to collectibles.

It clearly didn't work that great since it's pretty slow here lately LOL however, I am curious if anyone who has joined in the past 2 years found this place through them?

The sites are irlbtc, irlbitcoin, and irlbitcoins, all .com's

I've recently developed irlbtc into a marketplace for use in the near future, but have been curious if anyone found us here through any of those sites in the past?

Also worth noting, I had planned on setting up an advertising campaign and make a post here to raise funds to promote those landing pages, but this never happened, it has been only organic traffic this whole time.

Thanks for your time! 

[Kazkaz27]

Well I’ve been here for about 5 years now, not 2 and I don’t remember how I came across this place other than being obsessed with bitcoin and spending countless hours of research on the internet. But when I first landed here I almost didn’t stay because of the layout and format of the forum was difficult to use. It was slow and not easy to navigate and explore the information stored here. It quickly became the best place for my research especially once I figured it all out. If I wasn’t obsessed I would have given up fairly quickly on trying to navigate through this forum. Now it’s like second nature.

[aoluain]

Nice one Zip.

I have found in the past that setting up a website isnt enough in itself, in order to generate
traffic there needs to be a lot of optimisation and marketing done in order for the search engines
to index and show your site and that takes a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of social media work
and a lot of maintenance.

I have created sites before for people but more work goes into actually getting it visible on search
engines than designing the site.

"SEO" - search engine optimisation might be something to look into to get more visibility for your
sites, I am kind of out of touch with it so I cant really give any specific pointers?

This thread - [INFO/WARNING] New Lydian Coin on Powercoin.it by tldr-hodl would suggest there is still apetite
for collectibles based on his last post...

Jesus and that gold plated one for insane $700 is marked as sold-out as well...
No wonder they just continue making this low effort stuff

So yea it definitely worth having your site and maybe worth the time and effort to market it.

[seavodin]

I can share my journey to this magical glen
I've only been here for a short amount of time- joined at the end of Jan this year.

I had been collecting various MJB coin replicas for a number of years;
I enjoy having a physical reminder of my commitment to btc, and to try and incorporate this into my daily life.
The physical keeps me on track for the digital accumulation.

I was getting pretty damn disappointed with the MJB replicas, because many of them are extremely low quality price grabs and I'm a huge sucker for quality handmade items. I had known about Casascius coins, but they were a bit out of my price range, and so it took me a while to realize that there were cheaper alternatives for physical coin storage. Looking at Casascius, I eventually stumbled upon Satoris and other more mainstream facing coins- so i began purchasing them through the only marketplace where i knew they existed, ebay.

After buying some coins on ebay for a period of time, I eventually ran into a forum member here who said that he posted his stuff not only there, but a few other places, one of them being bitcointalk. So I hopped on over here, seemed like the smart place to go- the genesis of the coin community.

I would have started here first, if I had known this place existed. But by and large I would say this place is relatively unknown, and collectible btc coins are even less known. Just even perusing reddit, i come across a number of bewildered posts when people encounter Lealanas, even from people who are actively purchasing bitcoin and the alt coins- the people who I would guess would be the prime consumers of these collectible coins.

When it comes to increasing traffic to your website, my suggestion would be to put up listings in the more mainstream marketplaces. For example, putting up listings in places like ebay or facebook marketplace that are slightly more than you would normally charge, and then having information about your marketplace and saying thats its cheaper buying direct. This will then encourage people to check out your page and will be organically introduced to more kinds of physical coins than they would through something like ebay. I'm not sure if you'll have information about said coins on there, but links to bitcointalk's encyclopedia/sticky pages would be a great bridge back to this place.

[ZipReg]

Thanks for the replies guys, it's interesting reading these stories.

Regarding the sites, they definitely ranked well initially in SE results but have not been updated at all. A lot of the images no longer exist, etc. It was a test to see if the titles like "Casascius 1 BTC 2011 Error Coin" would draw high SE rankings. I think it would have been helpful in bringing people here if we raised funds and had a paid ad campaign pointing people here.

Still if I do a search now check out the results LOL:



I wonder if anyone else can confirm they show up in results, or maybe the results are based on my previous searches?


Regarding this place, I lurked for almost a year before joining. Back then I had minimal knowledge of bitcoin but as a novice game developer had a idea of making a bitcoin based massive multiplayer game of skill competition.

That was a little over seven years ago and I'm very proud to say I am almost ready to launch that project! Very excited about announcing that one!

The knowledge contained in this place, and many of those I have met here have helped me out tremendously over the past 6 years, and I truly am grateful and thank you all.  

Pretty crazy to think how people just getting here now will probably still be considered early adopters in the grand scheme of things, eh?!?!

[seavodin]

Using chrome:


First pass it changes the search parameter.
Forcing it to use it:



Similar to your results.
This thread is the fourth result down (off the screen).

[aoluain]

While its ok to search for your own site address IRLBTC to see if its indexed on the various
search engines its more beneficial to see if the site is indexed for other searches.

If I search for "Casascius 1 BTC 2011 Error Coin" on Google the first page shoes two listings
from Stacks & Bowers followed by "great collections", ebay, bitcointalk.org, PCGS, Scarce City,
Steemit, Heritage Auctions, Bitcoin Wiki, Reddit, invaluable.com etc.

You essentially are competing with all these....and thats just for that specific search.
I guess you would want your site to be listed for all other collectible coins of note?

A paid advert is one way of getting up the searches but its an expense and I guess as
soon as you stop paying the advert dissapears, I think that is acceptable for sales of
a particular item but I personally wouldnt pay for an advert just for an information page,
no disrespect.

[Shakeyjake]

I found this site while researching physical bitcoin. I have been contemplating starting to mint my own coins. If anyone has advice on how best/easiest to incorporate crypto into that, I am a newbie in the physical crypto space.
Great community!

[ZipReg]

Using chrome:


Similar to your results.
This thread is the fourth result down (off the screen).

Wow that's pretty impressive, it's probably only because the irlbtc site content just changed like 4 days ago so it's getting a refresh of sorts in SE results since it used to point to the landing page the other two still point to.

While its ok to search for your own site address IRLBTC to see if its indexed on the various
search engines its more beneficial to see if the site is indexed for other searches.

If I search for "Casascius 1 BTC 2011 Error Coin" on Google the first page shoes two listings
from Stacks & Bowers followed by "great collections", ebay, bitcointalk.org, PCGS, Scarce City,
Steemit, Heritage Auctions, Bitcoin Wiki, Reddit, invaluable.com etc.

You essentially are competing with all these....and thats just for that specific search.
I guess you would want your site to be listed for all other collectible coins of note?

A paid advert is one way of getting up the searches but its an expense and I guess as
soon as you stop paying the advert dissapears, I think that is acceptable for sales of
a particular item but I personally wouldnt pay for an advert just for an information page,
no disrespect.

Yeah buddy it was a long time ago when I set these up, but the idea to do so was based on some of us here noticing some thread with certain titles here were ranking higher in SE results than others.

Keep in mind my recently changed site is not the topic, I only mentioned it because it was also pointed to the landing page for a very long time up until some days ago.

The irlbitcoin and irlbitcoins sites landing page that points people here is what I am discussing regarding SE results, maybe trying a paid ad campaign, etc.. All talk about that is for getting people to this section of this site, nothing to with any sites I run, just to be clear that we're on the same page.