I went to a Dungeons and Dragons meetup today in order to, well, meetup with other Dungeons and Dragons players. Of course, my ulterior motive was to show of Obsidian Portal a little in the hopes that I could garner a few more subscribers/beta testers.
I have never been a sales person before, so I was a little worried about trying to sell something. Luckily, my wife Sarah, has been through some of this before with her website, Southern Spaces, and had some good advice. Rather than approaching it as a sales opportunity, I should approach the meeting as an opportunity to network with other gamers and talk about our campaigns. Naturally, any discussion of my campaign would lead me to show off the Adventure Log. Then, I could use this as a jumping off point for describing the website.
Sarah’s advice was quite helpful and put me much more at ease. Rather than being a corporate shill trying to sleaze my way into this group, I would be a fellow gamer there to talk about my game. If the opportunity to talk about the site presented itself, then I would take it, but I would not otherwise try to force it.
Still, I think it is useful to set goals, so I told myself that I would try to get five people to sign up for the site, and at least one person to create a new campaign.
Unfortunately, only two other people showed up to the meetup. I blame it on the fact that it was on Easter Sunday. It was truly disheartening. Of the two that showed up, only one was really much of a hardcore player. His name is Logan, and he is currently playing in one campaign and getting ready to start another. I tried to sell him on the idea of hosting his new campaign on Obsidian Portal, but he seemed sort of on the fence. Perhaps if I keep at him, maybe I can convince him to give it a try. I don’t want to be too pushy, but being not pushy enough really isn’t getting me anywhere.
Although the meetup was fun, and I really enjoyed talking to Logan, the final tally of signups was a big, fat zero. That’s not good.
The next Atlanta area D&D meetup is one month away. Hopefully we can get the homepage working by then and perhaps make things a little more usable, with better page flow and perhaps some documentation. Then, assuming the meeting is much larger, I can give it another go at recruiting some local players.
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