14 DAY TRIAL // One year after it went online in January 2010, Forrst, an invitation-only design community has grown spectacularly, posting very good numbers for a niche start-up.
Launched a few months after Dribbble, the two established themselves as the main front runners when it came to high-end closed design communities.
Right now, Forrst has over 21,000 registered users, and about 10,000 more on the waiting list. With over 1.7 million unique visitors last year, the numbers are still going up.
Based on these statistics, the start-up launched several services to monetize on its success.
“The Cabin” was released as a place to find weekly deals for web designers, developers and similar creative artists. Promoted posts and on-site credits (referenced as Acorns) soon followed, all to very good reviews from users.
This week, they've launched two new services: supporter accounts and Forrst.me.
Despite documented customer behavior of rejecting paid memberships for a previously free service, 500 users pre-registered for a supporter account in the first 24 hours.
The most interesting and perhaps in our opinion the most inspired move Forrst made was the launch of Forrst.me, an one-page vCard-like profile page for Forrst members.
“Forrst.me gives members a Forrst-powered web presence -- a contact form, links to their other social sites, plus anyone can browse the user's public-facing [Forrst] posts,” said Kyle Bragger, Forrst founder in an email for Softpedia.
Similar to what About.me and MyOnePage.com have been doing, Forrst.me is a much more targeted tool, allowing visitors to pull the designer / developer's Forrst posts (project images, snapshots, code, links) and view only the necessary information he would want to see from a web professional.
Forrst.me is still in beta, but according to Mr. Bragger, “plans for a premium account, including a stats page and custom domain support” are in the works.
Other future ventures include a job board powered by Behance's job network and a re-launch of The Cabin, this time in partnership with AppSumo, the famous deals site for web services and software.
In the big picture, a mass number of designers are being drawn like flies to a light when it comes to showcasing their work with their peers, and other initiatives like LoveDsgn and Designmoo are also cashing in.
There are many numerous advantages for posting artwork on these kind of community sites, like finding a job, boosting an artist's reputation, finding business partners, setting up collaborations, studying the app market, design trends, etc..
The main catch is not to let yourself get drawn in the hype, to work and get a real task done for money, not just for reputation points.
