That's because Mene is way better. ;)

I... dunno?

I wish we could get Steve to do it. *is currently watching those videos* And there was a dance contest? o.o; I'm envious of the ones I've seen. They can dance better than me.

I'm wondering what are the top things that make a person stay on a site like Menewsha. There are so many people that I know were active on Menewsha in the past and aren't active anymore. I suppose it has to do with real life. But if you truly loved Mene, you'd always make time for it, right? I want more people to love Mene like I do. :gonk:

@Liz
I suppose so. :XD

:gonk: You don't know?

:twisted: We beat up those who dance better than us!

lol, Roachi...that's a chicken?

I'm an old fart (just ask Facade), and probably WAY too old to be on a site like this.

But you all keep me young!

*steals Jeanne's headphones* :3 It's actually a chickie, a chickie on her head!

I would ove to help, but i don't even have a clue as of how to draw pixels. Can someone please tell me a short discription of how i might be able to some.

EDIT: 2... or was it 3? *shrugs*

There are tutorials all over the web. :) You can try your hand at those, as well?

O thanks... will search for tutorials and lets hope i can get the hang of it.

8D It's not too hard, once you get into it! It's all about having confidence in your abilities!... and patience. :lol:

Since my DA is purely free nude pinups at the moment I don't think it would attract the kind of crowd your looking for by posting the links. Ads like this aren't allowed on most of the sites I go to. >.< The best I could do is post some posters at comic/sci fi/anime cons I go to but the next one isn't till march.

Another site I'm on put out an open call for pixelists...
They asked them to submit some examples. Then they chose the "winner".

Now they have more pixelists!

I'm kind of sad to know there will be no Valentine's event (was looking forward to seeing the Mayor again <3), but I understand fully.

I'm not sure I would be any good at doing pixels, I would gladly do it for nothing. I've never really done it though, but I could try and play around.

I do think it might be nice to add more to the feeling of being on an island. I realize you can't afford to do much right now, but if your able, maybe try starting small, go more in depth with the character profiles in the NPC guide, have a section of the site to describe Menewsha in detail. I don't know if it would cost anything extra to do that or not, but it might be a start, to help draw people in to the allure that is Menewsha! I mean, if I can get a crush on Mr. Mayor with just the little I know about him, imaging about how fascinated someone could get with detailed profiles! I don't know who takes care of site art or where you stand in being able to that, but if you were able to you could do some nice art of the island scenery and more NPC art, would be a nice touch, but even just description would be a great start, something to draw people in and make them feel like they could visualize themselves being on Menewsha. Maybe even make a tab to it at the top of the site with the other section if able. Again though, I don't know how much of this is possible, but It's my best idea at the moment, of what you could do on site.

I'll try to post links to facebook, and maybe my faction's site that I'm in on PWI. I wish I could post right to PWI's forum, but they don't really allow that kind of stuff. I have been toying for awhile, with the idea of taking a recording of myself singing and drawing some fan art of Mr. Mayor and making my own Menewsha themed music video, I could put a link in. Maybe I could even use site art, if given permission of course.

Those are my only real options, I don't have any real life friends to ask, and I live in a small town, with nothing but a well drilling co. and a Church, with nothing but elderly members mostly, not even many people my age in the town for that matter. I'm not in collage and in no activities or clubs.

I'll try to see if I can can do a bit of donating every month or so too, provided I have any leftover cash each month, money's been kind of tight.

I would love to help in some way and if there's anything I could do to help the site, just let me know.

Edit: I just had a thought. I don't know where you stand on site artists, like those who do the banners and NPC art, but if you have enough, maybe you could do more comics and link to them from Menewsha. I recently saw the ones on Menewsha's DeviantArt page, and I loved them! I think those would interest people. And I have to give props to whoever did those too, the story line was interesting and Mr. Mayor looked freaking hot in the second comic! And Able in third as well.

Originally Posted by Maria-Minamino

Excuse me if I don't make sense - woke up with the worst headache of my life this morning - finally stopped throbbing three hours later.....I make sense to myself at least....

I know many users have deviantart accounts - everyone can post in their journals to try to get their followers to join through a referral link. And any gaia people could really try to get their friends to jump ship as well (that's how I joined anyway - all my friends left gaia for mene back in 07 and so I followed). EDIT2: I just posted a journal on my DA....I told them to join and see how it is and then spread the word if they love it. And I also said I'd give them an item or some gold to help them out if they did :) (incentive! XDDD) Not many active people follow me on there but we'll see if I help at all...

Honestly, I know we don't like it but starter clothes would help keep members here I feel. Give everyone a special shirt or something if they join in the next month...kinda like the georgia shirts that were given away if you went to the convention. EDIT: that's probably a bad suggestion - creating a new item when you aren't able to create new items (sorry I'm sorting through this headache XD)

College students - print mene flyers and leave them around college campuses on benches, tables, etc.

Utilize youtube? Someone could create mene videos/slideshows and just post them up on youtube...that way we can just link videos on different sites....cheap advertisement.....XD

EDIT3:
Is there a city where a lot of menewshans live in particularly? A flashmob promotion might be kind of cool....

I love your idea of posters/ flyers at colleges. Such a perfect thing. There have been many a times I have looked at events and various things online because of an interesting flyer I saw around my university campus.

Another idea, if a few users do do that, would be to take photos of where they post the flyers, if there was say a general one that you could print and post where ever, like we have with out little fantastic Yans. There could be a thread devoted to following the mene flyers, just because on top of promotion, it would be amazing to see what cool places users are near!

Originally Posted by Roachi

@Liz - Yeah i dunno about you guys. But most of the older people (adults) on sites like these, have been following avi sites since they were in their late teens. Trying to recruit "fresh" adults to sites like these, nowadays is pretty tough lol.

@Jean - A number of things LOL. A chicken, that crown thing from the ningyo, and a pose in that storm CI.

Originally Posted by Liztress

I know. And I feel so weird trying to reach out to those in their teens. :lol: I feel like I don't relate as well as if they were closer to my age.

Roachi: Liztress: Jeannesha:
We're not looking to target solely younger members :) We LOVE having a wide age range within our userbase. Don't forget that the main two things that Mene is all about is hanging out, and dressing up.

Many people who know nothing about forums could well be put off by the term "avatar site", because they don't know what it means. But people who enjoy places like Facebook and Tumblr for their social interaction, could very likely enjoy Mene, because it provides people with a whole host of new faces to get to know and enjoy talking to. But mainly, because you get a new "game", you get a cute little person to buy clothes for, and dmake look pretty with fancy hair colours.

It's an ongoing thing, too, like any good game should be. You want to come back and progress. Progression in our case being earning more gold for more pretty items.

I'd LOVE it if we could draw in more stay-at-home mums and so on. People who maybe spend their spare time playing online bingo or on game sites like Pop Cap and so on. Introduce those ladies to a forum full of friendly people, with their own dress up doll, and I think most of them would love it!

Originally Posted by kitkat

I think mene should look into any kind of advertising... it's a needed investment... what kind of people are we trying to target? passing out flyers at some kind of anime related things would help, I think. also advertisement on tektek? I know it would cost money but it's necessary.

kitkat: There's just no money for anything like that, and it's not a sound investment, anyway. The problem with Tektek is it bringing in Gaia users. That sounds harsh, but let me break it down...

Gaia has a vast amount of users and and vast amount of them are younger, and prone to spam/trolling. If Inso spent money out of his own pocket to advertise on Tektek (which is what he would have to do), we absolutely would gain several thousand new users. But a large chunk of them would just spam and leave, because we don't give them what Gaia does, and what they demand from site like us. They're used to Gaia's way of doing things and think we suck because we're not the same.

We'd definitely gain some good new users, and some of them might even become donators, but the amount of those that we'd gain from the overall amount that joined would be very low.

I did some math after the very first Tektek ad that Josh ran (what a horror that was) we gained 3000 new accounts from that. During the time the ad was running (it came down early because we yelled at Josh and insisted on that) we banned 1500 of those people. Once the ad was down a further 500 got banned. So that's 2/3 gone already. Out of the last 1000, about 50 stuck around. One of them was CK :B

Of course that ad was stupid as it was rude towards Gaians, and we tried to talk Josh out of using it, but he wouldn't listen. Suppose he didn't care, he wasn't the one cleaning up all the mess it created!


But when Inso ran Tektek ads the figures weren't so dissimilar. We can't compete with what the average Gaian is used and wants from an avatar site, we're not the same as them, and because SO many of Gaian's members are spammy, trolly brats, they do little but cause trouble on the other sites that Tektek ads lead them to. If the money was there to addvertise I'd want to run Facebook ads again, and target people who want to hang out and chat, and like dress up! Aiming for the people who are already on avatar sites isn't such a hot idea, as they come here with pre-formed expectations.

Phew, this ended up being rather long :lol: I'll stop for now!

I'll try Jelly. :)

I think this is a good idea......recruting and such

But what I just suggest (which might dissapoint some) that small events like St Patricks day and Valentines Day, just do one or two free items and leave the big events (Easter, Halloween and Christmas/New Years) with the big planning......


.......which might cut costs too for the snazzy CIs or EIs for the events ^^

I don't know if anyone suggested this yet, but I thought, hey, at least it's out there......

heh, oh Josh...

Wingy has a suggestion~

mebbe stroll through the Art shops and see if any of the pixelests there would take mene items for pixeling a few items?

Wingy also suggests, why not skip the shop update for this event and just do CI and EI's?
And, in addition, maybe could run a pixel contest, and put the top three winners items in the shops for the event?

And also~
Why not have the CIs/EI's be single pose only? IMHO, the single pose CI/EI's of '07 tended to be the best anyways~

I really wish people would just get over it and let us have a cash shop! I think it would really help the inflow of money. I know everyone is scared it will some how turn us into Gaia. WE ARE NOT GAIA! It is blatantly apparent that Mene is not a money grubber, and it users are more responsible and not as greedy which will also help to curb inflation, the other thing everyone is freaked about.

ALSO change is good once people get used to it, I think people are imagining a much worse disaster then what would really happen.

I know that a cash shop would mean more items to pixel but it would be fine to start with just like two maybe tree items and then leave them up there for a few months, hopefully by the next round there would be some cash flow

i don't think a cash shoppe is the end all of menewshan concepts either.
i think it's the greed that gaia promotes that makes it a horror.
one or two cash shoppe items to help menewsha make some monies is fine by me.
and like the yumeh plushie, if they are cute enough, i will buy some of them in addition to the monthly contribution items.
that being said, i do understand how it is when you don't have the monies to buy the meenies.
but, we have some members who sell them cheaply and that is a great way to help menewsha.

i have been wondering if yumeh plushie sales have helped at all this month.
i am planning on buying a few more yumeh plushies to save for future event threads.

what if Mennies could be trade for gold?
I don't know why sites don't do that it would lvl the playing field a little for those who can't donate, and cut out the "I hope someone buys an extra something or other and sells it for a decent price"

i think jellysundae addressed that at one time,
but i don't remember what the reason was, sorry.

Hmmm really? I'll have to stalk that out...
Do you think it might have been an announcement?

Sorry we got so off topic :(

OH Jelly if you see this, I (hate to ping someone as busy as you) I made a thread asking for people to show of there pixel skills for you, it's in the art post forum

Originally Posted by Bound Birdie

what if Mennies could be trade for gold?
I don't know why sites don't do that it would lvl the playing field a little for those who can't donate, and cut out the "I hope someone buys an extra something or other and sells it for a decent price"

I have often woundered the same exact thing actually. I would really like to read the response to that.

Originally Posted by hummy

i think jellysundae addressed that at one time,
but i don't remember what the reason was, sorry.

You wouldnt happen to remember were that it was she touched on the subject would you hummy? So i may go reads it.

for the last few months i had a full time job and used to buy extra ci;s and sell them for decent prices. but my job has fallen through, the company is going bankrupt. so i cant donate right now. but when i get a full time job ill donate again i promise! dont die on me mene!!!

i just referred a friend to mene. hopefully she starts donating and stuff, to keep the site going. i dont have very many real life friends to ask, but i can try to ask them to join mene. thats about the best i can do... short of wearing a mene shirt in rl when i walk around. If i did that, we might see a boost in numbers as my breasts tend to draw a certain amount of attention. lol. i could try silk screening a mene shirt, or do a print out one...

:idea: I have an idea. But it is reaally weird. it could be like a contribution item... u can buy like an extra set of hands and there would be stuff that works with the boottom set of hands just like the top set. There could be special stuff for them....i know it sounds weird but hey if we can buy tails why not an extra set of arms.:idea: