Posted February 6th, 2006 in General |
I wanted to make another quick post and find out from my readers what you would like to see posted here. I have the “In the Beginning” series of what to do when starting a forum scratch. I have the new and very popular Case Study that is a work in progress. I am gettting a great amount of positive feedback about the tips and help I am offering here as well.
Outside of these items, what would you like to read about? What matters to you? What current issues are you having?
Feel free to use the Mailbag feature as well. Any question I receive will in turn receive a response! 
My main concerns and interests lie in the Forum Monetization and SEO areas… basically making more money and getting more traffic to my site
I like the sound of that! Have you found the 26 monetization tips already talked about helpful? Any areas you want to explore?
Yep I have read all your entries on here and found them very informative. I am very interested in Google Adsense as you are and I am always looking for ways to improve my CTR. Azoogle seems interesting but I am wondering how it will do with my topic. I am just trying to figure out what kind of advertisements work with my topic the best and the best placement for them.
How about a weekly post where we submit our forums and you tell us where/how we can improve? I’m sure everyone would learn a ton.
Just a thought.
I’m interested in monetization too, mainly dealing with paid subscriptions. I’ve got a rapidly growing forum, I think the point where I can actually start testing this is a month or two away.
Perhaps some comments about general running of your business could be included. Tax problems, cashflow concerns, hiring other people to get work done, etc. I love any comments about you starting new forums/sites/projects. Also any industry news.
But you hvae to remember, these aren’t just forums, this is an actual company and should be run as such. I would love to know where you want to take this company. What are you goals and vision of it in the future? How will you take it to the next step? Buying other established forums? Aggressive growth strategy by creating lots of new forums and putting your energy into them?
I imagine if you created enough good forums you would essentially own a pretty good sized media company, with MASSIVE profit margins! Then if you ever decided to sell the company you might take her public (and thus have the company be worth 10x-20x earnings. I mean… if you can get 20 years of profits for taking her public when your ready to sell, it aint too bad an option.)
For the most part, I love your forum and the topics you cover on monetization and the industry and your mini-series articles. Maybe add some more things on how you run your business and what your philosophy is etc.
Just a thought.
My main concern right now is:
I offer a lot of features, get 2000 uniques a day and there is 2 problems:
-Signups dont post, rarely one in one hundred will post…
-Im making a whooping $1-$1.20 per day with adsense, max $3. :/
Very good comments and ideas. I have MANY things working right now and I will let you know more when I can.
Hey, if you’re going to write about how to startup a forum, why not make up a checklist of all the things that you should do with your forum but aren’t mentioned in the manual. For example, one of the decisions you need to make when installing vBulletin (well, it can be changed later, but it ain’t easy) is whether to have your attachments in the database or in a folder on your server. The advantages/disadvantages vary depending on each person’s circumstance, and it’s great that Jelsoft gives you this option but unless you really dig you don’t know about the feature. There are tons of things like that, even I’d use a checklist if it was extensive enough.