Strengths and weaknesses of eurobilltrackers.com

[Infrarouge]

At the moment, membership in eurobilltrackers.com is rising. Many new members join the community and more and more eurobills are being tracked.

However, there are still big regional differences in mebership. While in Finland there is one tracker per 176 inhabitants, in France it's just one per 6500 inhabitants. Consequently, in Finland it takes on average 67 bills to get a hit, whereas it's more than a thousand (!) in France! But even the relatively high rate in Finland is quite low compared to the hit-rates at the American equivalent of our hobby, whereisgeorge.com. There, hit rates are at 10-20 %, so it takes you 5-10 bills to get a hit.

Getting a hit is the biggest motivation for our hobby. As the numbers show, hit numbers rise exponentionally, when participation grows. So how can we work on that?

I think a good idea would be to promote our website more offensively. Maybe some google ads ore banners on other websites would be helpful. Also, it would be a good idea to install some worthy incentives for hard-working members, for example a 10 EUR amazon voucher for every 10 people that you invited.

And how should we get the money for that? I think, no one would mind having some banners on our website ourselves. Eurobilltrackers.com gets lots and lots of clicks, so I think we might make some money selling some space on our website to google.

How do you guys like my ideas?

[japh]

The idea of adverts on this site is anathema to me. Also as the site is completely voluntary there should not be any inducements offered to members in order to increase membership. In any case the majority of those who do join enter only a handful of notes and disappear again.

[Guest]

Well, my point is, it is plain boring if you don't get any hits at all. In a way, that's a vicious circle: because there are only few (French) active, you don't get any hits, it gets boring and you quit participating. You need a critical mass of members so that this hobby makes fun; it wouldn't by fun just playing it on your own, would it?

so what would you suggest to increase membership in France then?

[Kleman]

you can look at this section:
http://www.eurobilltrackerforum.com/viewforum.php?f=26

EBT is now an association

The website can't have adverts, according to me

[Schlauchen]

for example a 10 EUR amazon voucher for every 10 people that you invited.

There are too many ways to abuse a rule of that kind. Personally, if I would get 1 euro for every invited person, I would invite myself 100 times. Or 200 times.

If you want to promote EBT in the region where you live, it's always a good idea to contact the local press. Usually the newspapers are far more interested in a unusual internet site, when there's a person in the region who actually does that hobby. So contact them and hope for many new users

There are also some users who print hand-outs explaining EBT. I guess you're this user? In the german part of the forum you can find a brochure created by VolkerW ready for print-out.

[Dakkus]

WG functions that well because their standard way of doing things is to stamp banknotes. That way random people seeing the note are quite likely to come to the website to enter the note. If some 20% of the people are curious enough, then that yields a chance of close to 20%. For the typical WGer it comes as a big surprise that we don't stamp our banknotes practically at all.
With euros that is, however, not possible. If you stamp a banknote over here, it get's destroyed by the banks in a very short time. This the less of a problem, the further south you are in Europe, though. I'm guessing stamping might even work in Spain or in Italy. Then again, there they have a dramatically lower internet coverage among people, which makes it more unlikely that people would just go and check a page out of curiosity.

In many countries the people are also very paranoid about this kinda projects. The worst in that is probably Ireland, where several people have reported advertising EBT being difficult because everyone thinks it's some kind of a government spy project.

So, the main reason for our hitratio being worse than that of WG is in the policies of the European banks. And we can't really do anything about that.
Our users are already now putting EBT banners on their websites and referring users to EBT as efficiently as they can. I guess the Finnish level of efficiency is close to being as good as EBT can ever achieve. 1:20 might be possible, but if it drops under that, I'm surprised. And 1:20 is very well enough as well. After that it stops really mattering because you get a hit almost every day anyway.
And note, that 1:30 they are now havin in Finland has been achieved without stamping!

[ravestorm]

I'm guessing stamping might even work in Spain or in Italy.

It wouldn't work so good as you claim as our banks destroy stamped notes as well as other banks in €-zone.
We have some users who normally write/print EBT website on notes but hits involving those notes are a few number.

The difference is that BCE asks perfect notes and as a matter of facts it's really rare to find wrinkled and old notes, FED doesn't ask a so high standard, though.

[maarsy]

I'm guessing stamping might even work in Spain or in Italy.

It wouldn't work so good as you claim as our banks destroy stamped notes as well as other banks in €-zone.
We have some users who normally write/print EBT website on notes but hits involving those notes are a few number.

The difference is that BCE asks perfect notes and as a matter of facts it's really rare to find wrinkled and old notes, FED doesn't ask a so high standard, though.

the bank destroys alot of notes so i think its time we fire the bankers who do it

[erzin]

One of the things that has already proven to be a sucses, is contacting the newspaper and TV the moment the number of national notes reaches a certain level. If you look at the diffusion in Belgium, you will see that the belgian notes are less then 10% in may. in april and march, there where still more than 11%. This has also a news value, not just some strange hobby. This news will be more in the headlines and not in some entertainment section of the newspaper.
I don't know if there exist a standard text and if the WG has a list of journalists to contact.

[TARAPIATAPIOCA]

I'm guessing stamping might even work in Spain or in Italy.

absolutely no.
i've stamped 1000 notes without results.
and i've found a lot of international hits;stamped notes ? zero. in roma 2/3 of the notes are new.

[maarsy]

i stamp some to , not all they migt complain about that

but none of the ones stamped have been found back

[Infrarouge]

hat are you guys stamping on them? i wrote the url a couple of times on the bills, but it's so long, that you could hardly read it in the end. i would prefer it to be much shorter - can't we get http://www.ebt.eu, for example?

[Bleker]

You can also use http://www.eurobt.eu.
It's longer than ebt.eu but short enough I think

[Asiamaniac]

So, the main reason for our hitratio being worse than that of WG is in the policies of the European banks.

Regrettably right! There are countries where you cannot go into the banks and exchange your fivers into larger bills and vice-versa. You must have an account with them. France is an example for that. In addition, at ATMs you furthermore cannot chose toff the top of your head which denominations of bills you want to have. No wonder that hit ratios are down in the cellar. (On the other hand; EBTing is a bit more genuine... ) However, if you travel there with bundles of fivers, it is much easier than e.g. in Germany to find Kiosk owners or restaurants or coffee shops where they are more than willing to exchange your fivers into larger bills...

[Infrarouge]

I also noticed, that in Kosovo and Montenegro membership is ridiculously low. How come? There using the euro as well, aren't they? maybe we could treat those countries just like eurozone countries, for example in the pull-down menus (e.g. choose country)... perhaps this could be encouraging and motivating for the people over there...?