Operation "1 million real members" begins now, and you get to know all about it.

We are committing to one particular goal - reaching one million real members registered at UNA.io. In this blog, we will be sharing everything we do to reach that goal; all the wins, fails, tricks, and ideas. Everything. Real data.

Why a million members?

The total count of real members is quite simply the most straightforward and universally relatable metric; however, it's not the best indicator of the site success, admittedly. For most sites, a better indicator would be the number of active users. For some, it would be the online users count. Even more specifically, you could measure impact, content volume, or indeed, revenue.

Well, first and foremost, we want this blog to serve as a source of inspiration and factual experimental data that other community builders can apply in their own initiatives. Focusing on revenue or any specialised performance indicator could be too far removed from the goals of many communities. While UNA.io is a software platform site with a unique market proposition, we hope to share findings that will work for anyone building a community site.

Setting the goal at a million is a milestone. We hope to reach it, surpass it, and set a new one. It also often seems to be a magic number, where any healthy community site finds sustained traction from viral expansion. A million members means that you've more or less figured out how to scale your software, hardware, support, and site administration. And unless you are building a Facebook clone, it also shows that you're likely one of the dominant players in your niche.

Are you building a web community?

Over the last 17 years, we have launched a number of community sites, some enjoying long-term success, some doing well for a short time, and most flopping quickly. If only we had read a blog like this 17 years ago!

Whatever kind of website you're creating - customer community, niche social network, interest-based club, online dating, social initiative, entertainment hub - this information is very likely to be useful.

We are using UNA - our own open-source platform - as the site software engine. You can use it too, but you don't have to. The information we are sharing is largely platform-agnostic. Using UNA would simply make it easier to reproduce any positive findings.

Starting from now

UNA.io was "soft-launched" a few months ago. We didn't promote it in any way since the main product was still in the active, pre-release, development stage. We have had a few registrations, and a little bit of organic traffic has been trickling in, but for the most part, UNA.io is making a fresh start.

As from the 1st of April, we have 110 registered members.

It does not seem like much, but it means that over a hundred real people have given us their precious time and have created an account on UNA.io. That is already a great start. About 2-3 new registrations come daily.

As for the traffic, we have reached about 10 daily active users, with 100 weekly, 200 fortnightly, and just over 300 monthly users. 

In future posts we will dive deeper into other metrics, like pageviews, sessions, visits, bounce rate and such. For now, active users seems to be the most relevant indicator to track. 

Next up, bringing more people in.

For most A/B tests and experiments with conversions, we need a broader scope of reference. Simply put, we need a bigger number to work with. Therefore, next week we will be concentrating on early efforts to bring more people in, building up the initial flow of registrations.

Do not miss the next post.

Missing the next post may mean missing the opportunity to learn how to promote your community in its early stages.

Simply create a free UNA.io account, and we will keep you updated about the new posts. Registration is free, and you do not have to create a public profile. The fun part is that by registering, you will help us to move one step closer to that '1,000,000' goal. Join and let us make history together!