March 24, 2008
Hi Everyone - I know it can be confusing to have both a blog and a forum, but I think we have alot of great resources in here that are occasionally hard to find! (Who noticed the blog redesign and search box?)
Anyhow - as part of my long term goals, I have added a forum to this blog. Nope.. you wont find the link yet, but it will be up and running as soon as I get a few good ideas on what forum categories you feel are MUST HAVE categories or boards inside the forum.
Currently, the forum will be more than just Build a Niche Store focused. I also use 4-5 other niche website building strategies and I think many of you would like to know about those as well… so, if you could help determine the structure of a forum, built specifically to help people make money from mini content sites, what would that forum have in it?
I want to build a forum… “For the People - By The People”… I promise, I won’t run it like our Gov’t though! :-)
Thanks,
Mark
13 Responses to “Adding a Message Forum to this Website - Need Your Help!”
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Mark,
I think a forum is an outstanding idea…especially with all the followers you’re currently getting with the “Empire Series”. I know many of us have posted questions/concerns/confusions….myself and Rochelle to name a few :D….about anything and everything.
I personally would love to see some sort of “Q and A” section where someone can go in, ask a question and get it answered.
I can’t count how many times I’ll be reading this blog or working on a site and think of a question…or a bunch of questions. It’d be great if there was a place to go post a question and get an answer!
Looking forward to it!
Something of interest to me is PPC advertising/campaigns. I like the idea of not being dependent on the whims of the search engines. Not that there aren’t plenty of extenuating circumstances with PPC… but it’s something I plan to experiment with in the next few months.
@ Eric -
I already have the forums active - I just dont have a link to them as I build out the category structure… There will be areas for both basic and advanced questions that may require a bit more expertise!
@ Josh -
I have not done much PPC myself, but has a request out to a few bloggers who specialize in PPC…. I am hoping for a guest that will help us all in that area.
Mark
I like Eric’s idea of Q &A the way the bans forum is. With sections like BANS questions, Affiliate questions, Backlink Questions, Other money making questions (amazon stores etc…) Review my site or critique my site (bans or other)….. By the way I like the new design of the site here, easier to see new posts with the section last 10 comments.
Here are a couple that could be useful
Design & Layout - could include SEO
Picking a Niche
I’d really like a focus on non-technical stuff. The BANS forum is becoming the “How Do I Add An RSS Feed” forum.
I think some categories would be:
Traffic Generation
Content Creation
Link Building
Site Building Techniques
Encourage “full disclosure” type things like you’ve been doing on the 12 weeks series. I think most people lack a solid foundation because there’s so much info out there and some of it is crap. So if you say “I did this, got this much traffic, and made $X” then it proves something.
Ban affiliate links on the forum. Period. I’ve decide that all articles or posts that contain an affiliate link are crap. Do a full disclosure case study, show me that it works, then maybe I’ll buy it. Prove to me that YOU followed your 27 part plan to make a million dollars AND made a million dollars THEN I’ll buy your product.
Hmm…ranting again. Have to find a way to make money ranting.
Oooh Mark. You are really on fire lately. And I was just thinking how cool it would be if there was a forum here.
I’m not too particular about what you offer. I am sure it will all be great.
Otis,
Great point! Having a Q & A that is specific to certain aspects of traffic, building, customizing would avoid having random questions thrown everywhere!
I think a forum here would be great. I had a question just the other day and my first instinct was to post it here, but then realized it was not really a forum. Ended up searching for an answer in the BANS forum.
I agree with trying to keep the content focused or somehow contained when it comes to affiliate links. I usually do not trust most of them anyway.
Sherrin
What a great idea. I’ve thought about this all morning and here’s what I’d like to see:
- ‘Here’s How I Did This’ section. It would be similar to the ‘Tips and Tricks’ in the BANS section but actually detail exactly what was done and what coding was used. The BANS forum for this is more of, “Hey, I’m making $2k a month. I”m not going to tell you my niche, nor how I achieved this. But I will say you need to think outside the box.” Yeah. That’s helpful…
- Mod sharing. Some people are very clever and able to create some great mods (such as yourself). It is helpful to those of us when mod creators share their mods. I will even volunteer to help with writing instructions for those of you who may not be good at creating instructions.
- ‘I need help with…’ section. Requests for help tend to get lost in the BANS forum because there is no specific place to put them.
- “I obtained this service from…’ section. Someplace where we can share the URLs of where we have outsourcing done. For example, members can share where they got articles written and what the prices where.
- ‘Site Progress Updates’ section. This would be a continuation of the updates we have been sharing on the blog. This would allow everyone to share, including the people who aren’t guest blogging but have been following along on their own. But it would be purely voluntary.
I second (or third) what has been said about affiliate links. You’ve been kind enough to let us guest posters use them here in the blog but on forums they do get out of control. But I’m not sure you can keep them out entirely. Perhaps allow them in signatures only?
Oh, I can’t wait to see the forum : )
Rochelle
Oh, I just thought of one more.
- “Stay away from…” section. I’ve spent money on software or tools that have been pure junk or nothing like the advertised products. We could share what we’ve wasted money on. Postings here would need to be very specific about why the products are poor choices, or it could become a playground for trashing products unnecessarily. But I just got a refund on a product yesterday that didn’t offer refunds (I fought it through PayPal) and would gladly share so others don’t waste their money.
Rochelle
I like all of Rochelle’s ideas.
I’ve found the BANS forum less than useful, and although this blog is terrific I’ve often wanted to ask a question and felt that it’s inappropriate to tack it on to the end of whatever article I’m reading - especially when I’m playing catch-up - so a blog here with such motivated, helpful people is very exciting!
I’ve found the SBI forum (SBI is a hosting company that isn’t compatible with BANS) to be the most useful forum I’ve ever been a part of - if you like, Mark, I can give you my login details and you can have a look around. It might give you some good ideas regarding structure.
Marilla
PS - you’d better email me or I might not come back here to check if you’ve replied to this post!