Marketing on Bitcoin Talk. What Can Go Wrong?

Disclaimer: So as not to risk typecasting an entire community, I’m obliged to say that YMMV. It is possible (and maybe even probable) that our experience was a one-off, and not the norm. If that’s the case, I’d love to hear some nicer stories in the comments below.

I recently took part in a marketing effort for a cryptocurrency exchange (Nexchange) on Bitcoin Talk.

For those unfamiliar, Bitcoin Talk is a Bitcoin and crypto related forum, one of the oldest ones at that.

Since we were building a crypto exchange, BTCTalk sounded like a great place to get some traction. Admittedly we were all total noobs to the forum and had no clue that we were walking into a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Well, sort of. Maybe it’s our own fault. The full story, below…

To give you a quick rundown and make this post educational, there are a few ways to market on BTCTalk:

1. Firstly, there’s some free stuff you can do. For example, you can post a “service announcement” thread over here. That was the first thing we did, and in retrospect was the best performing bit of marketing we’ve been able to do on the forum.
2. You can bid to place your ads on the websites. There’s usually a monthly thread running where interested parties can place their bids. Winning bid gets to advertise. Simple enough. We didn’t go this route.
3. You can run something called “bounty campaigns”, where you pay a reward for people performing a certain action. For example, you can pay users for posting a set number of posts about your business per week. This is an example of something that used to be frowned upon but is now commonplace. I think it’s a great tool, and I wish that we’d have done it, but we went a different route.
4. You can do something called a “Signature campaign”. That’s what we did, and lived to tell the tale.

Signature Campaign, and How it Works

The basic idea of a signature campaign is to recruit forum members and have them represent your business by placing a custom designed signature and (optionally) avatar on their user profile. The idea is that forum visitors will start noticing these “ads”, and hopefully click on them.

Here’s how the whole thing works, start to finish:

1. You start by getting a custom forum signature for your campaign. Designing those is a bit of an “art-form”, and it is customary to hire one of the dedicated signature designers present on the forum. Also, as on any old-school forum, the more you post, the higher your “rank” is, and the more elaborate the signature you are allowed to have. That’s why it’s important to get several variations of the design made, ranging from a bare-bones one for Jr. Members, to an elaborate and colorful one for Legendary level members.

An example of a signature. I am in no way affiliated with ChipMixer. Nor do I want to be.

2. Afterwards, you need to decide on budget and structure. To briefly explain, campaign participants get paid based on two criteria: The rank of the member (higher rank = more money), and the number of quality posts the member posted on the forum while wearing your campaign signature. Yes, someone has to go over every campaign participant’s posts and ensure that they are up to standard.

3. Once everything is ready, you go ahead and post a thread announcing your campaign. The thread will contain all the rules and restrictions that apply to your campaign, as well as the pay structure. If your campaign is attractive enough, users will start applying by replying to your original post or PMing you.

4. Once your campaign is underway, you’ll be doing daily maintenance. Maintenance involves accepting (and declining) applicants, monitoring payouts, and policing you campaign members (making sure everyone is wearing their signature). Don’t be fooled. This is a lot of work.

What We Did Wrong.

1. We were behind schedule on our marketing and wanted to get started as fast as possible. As a result, we rushed into it without learning the ropes first. As a result our campaign ended up being way more expensive than it should have been.
2. We made a mistake of not hiring a good campaign manager from the get go.
3. We posted a thread announcing the campaign. A day later, we hired a campaign manager who told us right away that our campaign sucked (see #1 as to why), and that we should open a new thread with new rules. Trusting the expert, we did what he said. Then, he told us that we did it all wrong because we forgot to select the “self-moderated thread” option. Without it, he couldn’t delete all the negative comments that we were getting for our “erratic” behavior with the threads. So we created another one. Now with three threads full of applicants, each one containing different rules, logistics became a nightmare. Still, we trusted our manager to take care of it.
4. Forum members started openly flaming us for “suspicious” and “scammy” behavior (opening multiple threads, changing rules). Somebody opened a scam accusation thread against us, which was very upsetting because we didn’t scam anyone. We also started getting flack for opening a “self-moderated thread”. Apparently, that’s a big no-no. Damn.
5. We started getting demands from various forum members to fire our campaign manager because he was “inexperienced”, and hire another, specific, guy. If we didn’t comply, we were told that our “reputation on BTCTalk would be destroyed”. Granted, our manager was inexperienced, but he sounded decent and wasn’t asking for much money, so we took a chance. What could go wrong? A lot.
6. Here’s where things got really interesting. Our campaign manager, let’s call him “Sam”, told us that there’s some big-shot campaign manager on the forum who tends to use his influence to crush newbie managers and keep them out of business, mostly by trashing campaigns that don’t hire him or his affiliates. “Sam” also told us that this “godfather” of BTCTalk is the guy behind the scam accusation thread and the flaming.
7. Afterwards, without consulting with us, “Sam” decides to create a new account under a different name, all to create the illusion that we caved to the forum’s demands and replaced our campaign manager. This pissed off the already aggravated community even more.
8. “Sam” requested access to our forum account to “clean up the mess” because, without direct access to our account, he couldn’t edit all the campaign threads. We decided to give him this access.
9. In a bizarre (and ultimately last) decision, “Sam” personally attacked the “godfather” allegedly responsible for all our troubles, and hit him with negative reputation FROM OUR ACCOUNT. To explain a bit, BTCTalk has a reputation system in place. You can give other users positive or negative reputation. Reputation serves to help differentiate the good guys from the scammers. Naturally, the other guy retaliated and we got -3 negative reputation in return (which means that we had a red label that says “scam, don’t deal with this user”, displayed under our name).

How We Solved Everything…

This was rock bottom.

Traffic from BTCTalk ceased.

There was a scam accusation thread open with our name on it.

Our campaign threads were full of negative comments, with more added on a daily basis.

Our official forum user account had -3 negative reputation . All our efforts to answer the trolls as honestly as possible (HEY, WE DIDN’T ACTUALLY SCAM ANYONE!) were about as effective as cutting raw meat with a spoon. Here’s what we did to turn everything around:

1. We fired “Sam”, our campaign manager, and assumed control of our campaign. Due to his frankly idiotic behavior, this was a no-brainer.
2. We switched our campaign structure to something more manageable (monthly payout, no more than 15 members at once…).
3. We officially announced that all previous campaigns threads are now closed, and only the monthly campaign is valid.
4. We paid off everyone who was previously accepted by “Sam” to the now closed threads, and let them go. It took me a whole day to make a list of everyone we owed money, and send them the pay with a campaign termination/apology notice.
5. I contacted the “godfather” of BitcoinTalk and negotiated the removal of our negative rep and the closure of the scam accusation thread against us. While he denied all involvement, by “talking to the right people” he was able to get the scam accusation thread to close and the flaming to cease almost completely. Ah, and he also removed our negative rep.

And that’s it. With the scam thread closed and the flaming down to nothing, we started getting some traffic from BTCTalk again.

Damages? $600 in one week, and a lot of frustration on our end.

Lessons? Don’t rush into things, learn the ropes first. Hire the right people. And unless you absolutely know what you’re doing, don’t run a signature campaign on BTCTalk. Crazy, crazy community.

The author is a Blockchain product consultant at Nexchange.io and various startups.