By Bernard Maldonado
I’m not going to beat around the bush in this article.
The bottom line is that I have failed to attract Volunteer Operators for Solona. I am basically still a one man show! I am thankful for ‘Xavier’ from London who does serve when he can, but his schedule is full with work-related activities.
My original marketing strategy did not work, so I have a new plan and hopefully it will work better in future months.
In fact, the best response was from an article published by Dean Martineau from Top Dot Enterprises in his Top 10 Tech Tidbits for Thursday Newsletter. I am very grateful for his willingness to include a piece about Solona. Even though I didn’t get any volunteers from the people who sent inquiries, it was a really effective campaign, and I would like to recognize Dean’s Newsletter as a great resource.
I realize now that many people need to be reached in order to yield a small number of volunteer operators. The process of getting volunteer operators is simply taking more time. I still believe that the process will work.
The main problem is that I cannot continue to provide night time Captcha Solutions by myself. Why? It’s not healthy, and it has a profound impact on my daily productivity. Inconsistent sleep patterns are difficult for me to tolerate on a regular basis.
Moreover, it is not fair to the users who submit captchas that never get solved. Luckily, I don’t miss many, but I certainly do miss some. I took pride in providing service at all hours of the day and night, but now I realize that I’m harming the integrity of Solona since the quality of my service during these night time hours is lower than during the daytime.
I am going to start turning the status to “Off” during my sleep hours, which are basically from 11 PM CST to 6:30 AM CST. These are approximate times. It might be longer on some days, and shorter on others. So please don’t consider this like the hours at a Fast Food Restaurant.
The Status will be “On” during all other hours as much as possible.
This is the only way I can sustain a high quality service for Solona Users until there are more operators in the proper time zones to provide around the clock attention.
I consider this a move in the right direction. It means that Solona will continue to provide high quality service during hours that are manageable. Once Operators are online during those deep night hours, the high quality service will be even more prevalent around the clock.
Once there are operators available during my sleeping hours, then the status will be updated.
The good news is that you have an opportunity to help.
How? By being an Ambassador for Solona. If every Solona.net user would just ask one sighted person to be a Volunteer Operator, the results would likely be tremendous. There are over 1,000 registered users. Try to imagine the impact.
If you care about the free service that Solona provides; if you want to see Solona be a sustained service, then take action!
Ask someone at your place of worship, ask a family member, ask a teacher, talk about it in your podcast, write about it in your blog, talk to school friends. If you need something in writing from me for your website, get in touch and I’m happy to provide that. If you want to do an interview over skype or the phone for a radio show, or a podcast, just get in touch with me and I’m happy to do that. We can talk about Captchas in general, or Solona, or both.
Solona works well for people who sit at a desk for several hours and can take 20 seconds or so from time to time to browse to a different window. On the other hand, almost anyone can be an Operator from home: sitting on sofa with a netbook, or while sitting in a home office.
The good thing is that Solona is not invasive at all. The Operator dictates when he/she is available to serve.
One thing you can do is show people how it works. You know how simple it is. Just ask someone to take a moment and watch over your shoulder how you solve Captchas. Maybe they will like what they see and want to get involved.
I am doing my part to provide a high quality service that meets the needs of people who need help solving captchas independently. Please do your part to help find sighted operators who can join me in this quest.
I would like to take a moment and talk about the website design. Currently, the Solona.net website is not very friendly for sighted people. What I mean is that it is designed for people who use screen readers. The next site update is scheduled for late August. early September. The site will include a clear process for interested parties to register as an operator and obtain one on one training to be an operator. The color scheme will be more friendly for sighted people, as well. Some people might say “Why can’t you just update the site tomorrow? It’s just HTML, right?” It really does take time to release a new site design. It needs to be stable, tested, and logical. Also, there is the topic of the ‘back end’ of Solona, which required much programming and logical design. So that is a big chuck of work right there.
The reason I mention this is that you can’t simply say to someone: “just go to the website” (at least until September). Rather, you need to talk about it and even show it to people so that they see how it works and how meaningful it is to so many people.
Here is a link to a Volunteer Document that describes how Solona Operators work, and answers many questions about working with Solona. Download it, read it, publish it, refer to it, ask me questions if you need clarification. Give it to people you think might like to be operators.
Keep in touch with me via Twitter (@solona) or email (MySolona@gmail.com) and let me know if you have a prospect that wants me to contact them.
In the meantime, I will implement the Marketing Plan for Volunteers and the new site design. Between that and users spreading the word to people, there should be some new volunteer operators.
In order for Solona to work well at all hours of the day and night, there needs to be people in Australia and New Zealand solving Captchas. This timezone is perfectly located to provide opposite work from all North American time zones and vice versa. European time zones are also great for helping achieve around the clock uptime.
Thanks to everyone who supports Solona. Your messages and feedback are very generous.
Bernard Maldonado
Solona Captcha Solution Service
MySolona@gmail.com
skype: bernardmaldonado
Loading ...
Comments on this entry are closed.