The (Almost) Zero Dollar Marketing Challenge!!!

To be really frank and honest with you, ChupR started because of interest, not business, it still is an interest. We kept it as a hobby still because it’s what that motivates us. We do not intend to monetize ChupR yet. But we want it to be successful. This poses a dilemma:
How do we sustain this interest without introducing a revenue model?

Left: No Money? That's the challenge! (Image Courtesy: http://www.tortdeform.com/archives/no%20money.gif)

This in turn gave rise to trying to market ChupR with an extremely low budget. Which means we have almost zero dollar for marketing ChupR. This means how to do EVERYTHING for NOTHING. It’s pretty fun actually. Let me take this chance to share with you some of the
ways that we used in order of difficulty. Start with the easier ones that you are comfortable with then slowly move on to the more difficult ones as you progress. I would use ChupR as the example to illustrate my point.

Friends, Relatives, Family!
They are the best way to start! We were lucky enough to have quite a number of our friends promoting about ChupR to their friends which helped ChupR rise from nothingness to something. (remember, you got to go around asking people to help. If you don’t, no one
Would.)

Viral Marketing!
Well, you can say that we are again, pretty lucky to get hold of a few Ipods for FREE…. Which means zero marketing costs which we have to pay upfront. We used these Ipods and threw them in as an auction promotion in ChupR which encouraged the growth of the user base
And in turned help popularize the site when users talk about these promotions going on in ChupR. (this is a really good way for ChupR to gain high traffic and signups especially during the promotion period.)

Press and Media!
This is 3rd time lucky! We manage to get some press coverage on The Straits Times, Singapore’s most widely read newspaper. You can say that this is the BIG BREAK which helped us grew from hundreds of users to thousands of users. I guess we really have to thank Miss Tan Weizhen for featuring us in her article. If not, I am pretty certain that ChupR would not be where it is now.

Right: What to do with no money??? (Image Courtesy: http://www.moneyaftercollege.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/you-have-no-money.jpg)


Conclusion
You see, anything that we did here (in chronological order) started simply. And if we do enough of it, it does help us get to the next level. You would be dead right to say that luck plays an important role in this as well. But other than that, perseverance and determination also plays a great role in the success of starting (anything you want). Trust me, stick to it long enough, and your luck will come.


Up next: 3 ways to getting the user’s ATTENTION for sure! (well maybe almost!)