From $0 t0 $100,000 In Two Years

I sold my forum last week on Sitepoint. Although meant to be a 7-day auction, I received a BIN within 12 hours of the ad. This sale had special meaning because it was the last of my 'old' websites.

I remember starting off as a total newbie at Namepros back in late 2005, trying to make money with domain names. After a month, I knew it wasn't going to happen so I downloaded Coppermine and started my first website providing desktop wallpapers. I signed-up for Adsense and, unknowingly, optimized the site for a popular keyword.

The site was sold within two months for $6,500.

I learnt two important lessons:
1) it's not that difficult to make money from websites
2) SEO is important

So I spent the next months learning online marketing, basic web design (still using a GUI editor today), and the types of websites that make money (For Sale forums are a great place to start).

Approximately two years later, I've made $100,000 from my websites and I'm also an SEO/Internet Marketing consultant, with SME clients in Singapore to NYSE-listed MNCs. Not bad for someone with no formal training (civil engineer btw) eh?

So for all the newbies out there making $10 a month, my advice is to have faith in yourself and be patient because everything's possible.

 

yea that was a good effort in you,yea have faith on yourself but unless you try hard work nothing gonna happen,so gotta do hard work.

 

Great story, I am starting couple of blogs myself about finance and SEO/Online Marketing.
May be I should also add forum to the upcoming websites.
How did you get people to signup (traffic). I started a forum some time back but there are so many spammers with links to adult websites (its so difficult to moderate, takes a long time)
I am pretty sure you must have faced similar issues.
How much money was your forum making (per month) and what was the major source, adsense?

Congratulations..!!

 

congratulations.

Its nice to hear someone doing well, without trying to sell you into something.


Kudos.

 

thanks for sharing your experience with us, could you please share how did you all manage it to earn ? It would be a waypoint for members here in DP

 

Great lesson, i'm glad you made and are here sharing your results.

 

Many Thank for inspiration.

 

Good going mate

Good luck with your other sites

 

Great lesson buddy. Thanks for sharing!

 

I concur, Great lesson. Newbies should definitely ready that. To many are out for the quick buck.

 

Whoa! Congrats!

It's very inspirational.

 

this tells everyone to have hope and faith in yourselves

 

As I understand it, you made the money by selling the sites, right? Why not keep them and keep making the money? Just wondering, not criticizing your decisions.

 

See, it's all about anticipating popular products and grabbing a great domain name .

 

I sold my student forum for 1000$ here at DP

 

who was bought that ?

 

You could anyways check his/her thread list, and look for the sale.

Congratulations, I am glad to see you have earned a large amount of money online.

 

Right you need patience and everything are possible.
Advice!
Try to target your income first month 5$ per day,second 10$ per day .....

 

Wow! Never expected so many replies and PMs.

ktmonline: exactly. Many people get into websites thinking they're going to make money straightaway - buy a clone, install and place ads! Unfortunately, the same rules apply in the virtual world, i.e. you have to work hard, work smart and be patient. The big money comes from passion and dedication, not "automatic" websites.

makeadifference: I understand what you mean because I tried starting one from scratch too. So instead, I bought a forum and made use of my management and marketing skills. I pulled together a strong team, implemented strict rules, weeded out inactive forum, etc. The forum grew from 1,000+ to over 20,000 members in a year! I've to admit that luck played a role too.

sussane: I tried many affiliate networks, from Chitika to Linkshare. The ones that worked best for me (in order) were Adsense, Kontera, Amazon and CardOffers. It also depends on your niche and website, e.g. Kontera performed better on my forum than Adsense.

 

v_shukla72 - besides the strategies mentioned above, I put in a lot of effort into SEO and so our forum has strong rankings. In addition to my staff team (Admins, Supervisors, Moderators), we had a Helper team too to make sure questions get answered quicker. We also created a strict (e.g. no warez, cursing) but friendly environment. There were objections to my style in the beginning but the members soon understood and I was even receiving $100 in donations every month.

crystak: that plays a part too, yeah.

Anat: as with any business, you should have an 'exit' plan when starting a website. Sometimes there is business risk (e.g. anticipating competition) thus you should milk the cow if it seems right. Personally, I also had time constraint because of my growing consultancy.

Sorry I can't answer all the PMs but for those interested to know about the forum, you should read these posts (don't worry, no Adsense/affiliate links there):
- Time To Sell My Forum (Part 1)
- Time To Sell My Forum (Part 2)
- Finally Sold My Forum (Part 3)