Promoting to your friends and family can be scary. Does anyone have any cool stories of a time when they showed a friend or family member their website? Maybe you got shutdown, or maybe they loved it! Let us know in your reply 🙂
For me, it totally depends on the topic or genre of the site. If it's nerdy and weird, I don't risk showing it to my friends unless they know the nerdy side of me. It just depends on who it is. I am usually okay showing my parents and brother, but hesitate to show aunts and uncles certain projects. If one of my projects is more successful and established than newer projects, I am much more relaxed about showing it to my friends and family.
Newer projects usually stay for-my-eyes-only until I've made it public and then I don't show friends or family until it has been going for at least a few months.
I do not bring my forum in in conversations because it just isn't something that my friends or family are really into. Nor do I think they would be interested. A couple of my friends know I have the site because I will check up on it while we are hanging out, but none have really shown any interest in joining which is totally fine. I guess I try to keep them separate
^^This. I just find it better to keep my online life online, that and if I have to ban/warn a friend or family member, that would be just awkward and weird. 😛
I mention it to my friends if it comes up in a conversation and they're interested in the same stuff that I do, but even then very rarely. All that my family knows is that I play games online, they don't see the need to know what sites I am on.
I've never promoted to family - forums are a way for me to get away from them o.o
I have however promoted to friends, though they joined and never really took part in the forum much. I've had about 3 real life friends join though! But that was years ago.
No, it'd be weird for both me and them. I know a few friends know about my forums, but they haven't ever seen them, nor have I promoted them, for all the reasons mentioned above. I have however seen groups of friends join my forum at once, and I have twins on my current site.
What are "real-life friends"? Are you suggesting that online friendships aren't "real"? Funny thing is that I started making friends mostly online, so I voted for the first option.
Nope, to be honest I wouldn't ever, because I'd rather not let them know that I go on forums and that I'm active on them (I have my reasons). I'll stick to advertising to online people. :lol:
I also doubt they'd be interested, anyways. They're much too busy in their lives to be visiting forums. 😛
I didn't want any of my friends or family know about my website. But then one thing led to another and two of my friends knew about it before I launched it. When I launched my site they checked it out and the feedback was surprisingly positive. After a while I had some of my family member check the site out and they loved it XD
Still not sure if it was an excellent move of me to have them know about the site yet though...
In all honesty, it depends on what I'm promoting. A lot of my friends and family like the same things that I do and they following my projects pretty regularly. So, I voted for both friends and family.
