Off to Chase The Next Big Storm AR's V.P of Sales and Blog Trainer Signing Off.
This is a very interesting post, that every AR member should read. As you can clearly see there are dark clouds looming on the Horizon. Make no mistake, there is a lot of money at stake here...the acquisition of Active Rain was in the neighborhood of $450,000. The question is how does one provide a steady stream of cashflow without aleinating the very members and staff who are the backbone of this model. See my upcoming post, "Active Rain...If it Ain't Broke, Don't Fix it."
If you ask Jon Washburn he will tell you that he is “not a sales person”, but don’t let this fool you! What began as an innocent lunch back in 2009 resulted in me leaving my successful business behind to join forces with Jon at ActiveRain. The goal was to find a sustainable revenue model for a company that was on the brink of running out of the capital.
ActiveRain was a robust community at the time with a little over 100k members but very little dependable revenue. Jon, in my opinion, had two choices: he could clutter every page of AR with advertising, or we could start charging our new members to take advantage of the reputation (SEO) the community had built. Thus, the Rainmaker concept was born.
A few months later I began noticing that the agents who were upgrading to RainMaker with the hopes of increasing their online presence didn’t have the training required to make that possible. So I turned to my trusted friend Steven Graham, who within two weeks developed SEO strategies for those members of AR who needed it the most, and turned it into a two hour training class for new members. This single class evolved into ActiveRain University, led by Steven, which currently has over 10,000 graduates.
This company was Jon’s vision and legacy. ActiveRain is now at over 200,000 members, and in January alone of this year we signed up just shy of 1,000 new paying RainMakers! We were fortunate enough to be asked to join Jon on his journey to accomplish that vision, and we hope his legacy of ActiveRain-- and now DailyTicket-- will continue to grow and thrive.
Now that Jon’s active role in the network has ended Steven and I have decided to find a new vision. Changing lives, both within the ActiveRain community and at the ActiveRain corporate offices, is the reason we came to ActiveRain and the reason we stayed. Jon gave us the freedom to create a unique culture here that you couldn’t find anywhere else. The community thrived, as did the employees of ActiveRain. Since the changing of hands, we have grown to miss the creativity and challenges that come with building and maintaining this type of culture.As of today Steven Graham and I will no longer be employed by ActiveRain. The time has come for us to find a new home. We have been invited to help ePropertySites.com develop a social media and SEO blogging platform as their V.P of Sales and SEO Blog Trainer. Imagine every tool you could possibly need to succeed online in one tool box. That is ePropertySites.com, where we will both continue to do the work we love, and although we’ll miss being part of what goes on behind the scenes at ActiveRain, we’re excited to embark on this new adventure.
if you have any further questions or concerns please feel free to contact us at:
Doug@epropertymail.com
or
Steven@epropertymail.com
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