His idea seems very good. And it doesn't souund like a SCAm at all the way he promised to promote it. If he is ur friend, he will help you promote it. But I would rather, you spend the money urself, because ultimate you are going to run the forum. And before the forum get gets very very popular and starts growing and operating on its own with loyal moderators etc, you would have to drive it. So better learn to market it urself. 5000 is a good start, and I would rather spend it all on Adword. You would need to really gorge some adwords book (Marshall?) Then you would need to set up very clever campaign that targets people who will join after each click. And who will contribute. Make him Join. Then as a forum leader you would have to handhold him, welcome him.. You would have to google quickly and come up with answers to his questions etc. And keep spending the money to get Good Members... Don't use incentives and contests. All the best.
With $5000 you could BUY a decent income generating site! In fact, you could buy a website (within a niche you know about) for half the money and be earning straight away!!
That sounds like a great idea also, He said we will need to add a section for subscribed members only. I tried to come up with things to put in it that would push more people to subscribe but did not find many. If you guys know of anything that should be added to the subscription section only, please share your thought. Thank you all for your input.
If he is really your friend and IF he is really that magnificent, then strike a bargain with him -- get a much better proposal rather than that 5K!
But think of this. Why would someone pay to be a part of your site? What niche are you trying to participate in? I've ran membership based forums before but it is hard unless you have steady knowledge of the niche and perpetual traffic.
DigitalPoint is one of those forums that make more than $10k a month -- however, it took ages and a lot of luck to reach this stage.
If I could come up with a service that other forums do not offer. I m sure there would be a lot of people interested in paying for a membership. For example, I could have a section where members only will be able to download free templates, or free ebooks, or free Mp3s... I believe the sky is the limit to what i could offer. Please let me know guys what you think about this idea. Thank you in advance.
If you've got 5k to invest, don't put all of your eggs in one basket, spread your risk out for a better and lower risk, ROI.
You can make a fixed deposit of $5000 and at least manage your petty expenses out of the interest that you get. I would not suggest putting $5000 in a business for which you have no idea or you don't know how you will manage it. And imagine, if this is true, everyone would had been milking money like anything.
5000 deposit will not bring no money at all. even with a 10% return all I will be getting is $500 a year or in other words less than $42 a month. I have a feeling that my future is in the internet. I already have 45 websites that I manage. adding a forum to them maybe a good investment. Thank you for your advice
Well, all that I can say is that you are trying to self satisfy your mind. $5,000 is not a small amount my friend. So think twice before you do anything.
Why dont you make him the partner and tell him whatever my forums earn for one year would give him for him investing the initial amount and you would see the result.
He is not interested in making money from forums. His main goal is to help me for no charge. I offered him a lot of incentives but he does not want none. He said that if the forums or "when the forums" succeed that would be his best reward.