Site Improvement

[NOBLE]

As @Barzooka said, X, (one of the original owners) did create a mockup site that was the be Letsbeef V4. I've shared the link to the designs with Barzooka, and it's up to him if he wants to share it here. I think the current group of staff is great, because as far as I can tell, they're all fairly active and willing to help. It's a good thing that you guys are still willing to do what you can despite not being able to make coding changes to the site or having a budget. Speaking of budgets, have you guys ever thought of crowdfunding to raise money for specific events?

Here's a couple of things I think staff can do to help out a little more (even though I think you guys are doing a great job already:

• Crowdfunding...Instead of waiting for the owners to spend money (we all know how long that takes), if you have a specific thing you want to do and a budget for it (let's say spend $500 as prizes for a tournament), you could post it on GoFundMe and you might be surprised
• Soliciting Sponsorships...There are lots of companies out there that would love to tap into the audience that we still have. You guys can get around the owners not spending money issue by offering these companies access in exchange for sponsorship. For example, back in the day, I had Pseudo make me a noble@letsbeef.com email address (so shit looks official) and I would email businesses for that purpose. I was able to get HipHopBling.com to sponsor our tourneys with custom jewelry. Mugzz got us sponsorship with a clothing company at one time. We want to offer prizes for tourneys, but we don't have to come out of our own pockets or wait for the owners to spend money. We can still boast over 100,000 members (even if they're not all active), and I'm sure Google Analytics would still show our daily visits to be substantial.
• Running Inter-platform events...I think this is the key to getting new members. Don't limit tourneys and contests to just LB members. Open them up to people on other platforms. We did this before when we had Discord contests where it was LB vs people from other Discord servers. That opened the door for some of those other people to discover LB. You can do the same thing with some of these Facebook and Twitter rap groups. It doesn't necessarily have to be an LB vs them type of thing, but something that involves both LB members and outsiders, some of whom might have never heard of LB. You have more chances of bringing in new members by doing that than by waiting on the owners to mass spend on advertisements.

I think the future of LB HAS to involve social media. Even if you created a new website that looks sleek as hell and works on mobile, if it's not fully integrated with social media sites, you'd still have the same issue of lack of membership. The forum-based model is simply dead. You can't merely replace a 15-year old forum with a modern forum and think everything is going to be okay. There's a reason why most folks battling online are doing so on Facebook, Twitter, Discord, etc. Of course, none of these platforms will offer the amount of features that LB has, they will easily get way more members because people are already there for other reasons. It's so easy to invite your friends to join a group on Facebook, for example. I could say a lot more, but my girlfriend is about to visit. I might come back to this thread later.


Peace and good luck!

[NOBLE]

As @Barzooka said, X, (one of the original owners) did create a mockup site that was the be Letsbeef V4. I've shared the link to the designs with Barzooka, and it's up to him if he wants to share it here. I think the current group of staff is great, because as far as I can tell, they're all fairly active and willing to help. It's a good thing that you guys are still willing to do what you can despite not being able to make coding changes to the site or having a budget. Speaking of budgets, have you guys ever thought of crowdfunding to raise money for specific events?

Here's a couple of things I think staff can do to help out a little more (even though I think you guys are doing a great job already:

• Crowdfunding...Instead of waiting for the owners to spend money (we all know how long that takes), if you have a specific thing you want to do and a budget for it (let's say spend $500 as prizes for a tournament), you could post it on GoFundMe and you might be surprised
• Soliciting Sponsorships...There are lots of companies out there that would love to tap into the audience that we still have. You guys can get around the owners not spending money issue by offering these companies access in exchange for sponsorship. For example, back in the day, I had Pseudo make me a noble@letsbeef.com email address (so shit looks official) and I would email businesses for that purpose. I was able to get HipHopBling.com to sponsor our tourneys with custom jewelry. Mugzz got us sponsorship with a clothing company at one time. We want to offer prizes for tourneys, but we don't have to come out of our own pockets or wait for the owners to spend money. We can still boast over 100,000 members (even if they're not all active), and I'm sure Google Analytics would still show our daily visits to be substantial.
• Running Inter-platform events...I think this is the key to getting new members. Don't limit tourneys and contests to just LB members. Open them up to people on other platforms. We did this before when we had Discord contests where it was LB vs people from other Discord servers. That opened the door for some of those other people to discover LB. You can do the same thing with some of these Facebook and Twitter rap groups. It doesn't necessarily have to be an LB vs them type of thing, but something that involves both LB members and outsiders, some of whom might have never heard of LB. You have more chances of bringing in new members by doing that than by waiting on the owners to mass spend on advertisements.

I think the future of LB HAS to involve social media. Even if you created a new website that looks sleek as hell and works on mobile, if it's not fully integrated with social media sites, you'd still have the same issue of lack of membership. The forum-based model is simply dead. You can't merely replace a 15-year old forum with a modern forum and think everything is going to be okay. There's a reason why most folks battling online are doing so on Facebook, Twitter, Discord, etc. Of course, none of these platforms will offer the amount of features that LB has, they will easily get way more members because people are already there for other reasons. It's so easy to invite your friends to join a group on Facebook, for example. I could say a lot more, but my girlfriend is about to visit. I might come back to this thread later.


Peace and good luck!

[Barzooka]

Originally Posted by NOBLE

As @Barzooka said, X, (one of the original owners) did create a mockup site that was the be Letsbeef V4. I've shared the link to the designs with Barzooka, and it's up to him if he wants to share it here. I think the current group of staff is great, because as far as I can tell, they're all fairly active and willing to help. It's a good thing that you guys are still willing to do what you can despite not being able to make coding changes to the site or having a budget. Speaking of budgets, have you guys ever thought of crowdfunding to raise money for specific events?

Here's a couple of things I think staff can do to help out a little more (even though I think you guys are doing a great job already:

• Crowdfunding...Instead of waiting for the owners to spend money (we all know how long that takes), if you have a specific thing you want to do and a budget for it (let's say spend $500 as prizes for a tournament), you could post it on GoFundMe and you might be surprised
• Soliciting Sponsorships...There are lots of companies out there that would love to tap into the audience that we still have. You guys can get around the owners not spending money issue by offering these companies access in exchange for sponsorship. For example, back in the day, I had Pseudo make me a noble@letsbeef.com email address (so shit looks official) and I would email businesses for that purpose. I was able to get HipHopBling.com to sponsor our tourneys with custom jewelry. Mugzz got us sponsorship with a clothing company at one time. We want to offer prizes for tourneys, but we don't have to come out of our own pockets or wait for the owners to spend money. We can still boast over 100,000 members (even if they're not all active), and I'm sure Google Analytics would still show our daily visits to be substantial.
• Running Inter-platform events...I think this is the key to getting new members. Don't limit tourneys and contests to just LB members. Open them up to people on other platforms. We did this before when we had Discord contests where it was LB vs people from other Discord servers. That opened the door for some of those other people to discover LB. You can do the same thing with some of these Facebook and Twitter rap groups. It doesn't necessarily have to be an LB vs them type of thing, but something that involves both LB members and outsiders, some of whom might have never heard of LB. You have more chances of bringing in new members by doing that than by waiting on the owners to mass spend on advertisements.

I think the future of LB HAS to involve social media. Even if you created a new website that looks sleek as hell and works on mobile, if it's not fully integrated with social media sites, you'd still have the same issue of lack of membership. The forum-based model is simply dead. You can't merely replace a 15-year old forum with a modern forum and think everything is going to be okay. There's a reason why most folks battling online are doing so on Facebook, Twitter, Discord, etc. Of course, none of these platforms will offer the amount of features that LB has, they will easily get way more members because people are already there for other reasons. It's so easy to invite your friends to join a group on Facebook, for example. I could say a lot more, but my girlfriend is about to visit. I might come back to this thread later.


Peace and good luck!

This was very well written Noble. I really like the three ideas you stated here and I agree that Social Media will definitely be LB's future. Discord was a great step. Perhaps revamping the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & so on will be the next.

[Barzooka]

Originally Posted by NOBLE

As @Barzooka said, X, (one of the original owners) did create a mockup site that was the be Letsbeef V4. I've shared the link to the designs with Barzooka, and it's up to him if he wants to share it here. I think the current group of staff is great, because as far as I can tell, they're all fairly active and willing to help. It's a good thing that you guys are still willing to do what you can despite not being able to make coding changes to the site or having a budget. Speaking of budgets, have you guys ever thought of crowdfunding to raise money for specific events?

Here's a couple of things I think staff can do to help out a little more (even though I think you guys are doing a great job already:

• Crowdfunding...Instead of waiting for the owners to spend money (we all know how long that takes), if you have a specific thing you want to do and a budget for it (let's say spend $500 as prizes for a tournament), you could post it on GoFundMe and you might be surprised
• Soliciting Sponsorships...There are lots of companies out there that would love to tap into the audience that we still have. You guys can get around the owners not spending money issue by offering these companies access in exchange for sponsorship. For example, back in the day, I had Pseudo make me a noble@letsbeef.com email address (so shit looks official) and I would email businesses for that purpose. I was able to get HipHopBling.com to sponsor our tourneys with custom jewelry. Mugzz got us sponsorship with a clothing company at one time. We want to offer prizes for tourneys, but we don't have to come out of our own pockets or wait for the owners to spend money. We can still boast over 100,000 members (even if they're not all active), and I'm sure Google Analytics would still show our daily visits to be substantial.
• Running Inter-platform events...I think this is the key to getting new members. Don't limit tourneys and contests to just LB members. Open them up to people on other platforms. We did this before when we had Discord contests where it was LB vs people from other Discord servers. That opened the door for some of those other people to discover LB. You can do the same thing with some of these Facebook and Twitter rap groups. It doesn't necessarily have to be an LB vs them type of thing, but something that involves both LB members and outsiders, some of whom might have never heard of LB. You have more chances of bringing in new members by doing that than by waiting on the owners to mass spend on advertisements.

I think the future of LB HAS to involve social media. Even if you created a new website that looks sleek as hell and works on mobile, if it's not fully integrated with social media sites, you'd still have the same issue of lack of membership. The forum-based model is simply dead. You can't merely replace a 15-year old forum with a modern forum and think everything is going to be okay. There's a reason why most folks battling online are doing so on Facebook, Twitter, Discord, etc. Of course, none of these platforms will offer the amount of features that LB has, they will easily get way more members because people are already there for other reasons. It's so easy to invite your friends to join a group on Facebook, for example. I could say a lot more, but my girlfriend is about to visit. I might come back to this thread later.


Peace and good luck!

This was very well written Noble. I really like the three ideas you stated here and I agree that Social Media will definitely be LB's future. Discord was a great step. Perhaps revamping the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & so on will be the next.