Hey all, You lot are probably going to (hopefully constructively) criticize the hell out of me, but I need help so I figured you'd be the best people to ask. So basically I started a vBulletin forum with a couple of friends; it's a project we're doing together and we're hoping to build up a fairly large community by the end of it. Our "niche" is basically general discussion, and although I've heard about how this can be a bad idea I decided to go along and try it anyway because I like a challenge. So far, after just over a week we have 40+ members and 1000+ posts, so I don't think we're doing too badly in that regard. Our current advertising methods are social media and word-of-mouth, and probably about 10-15 of the members are actively promoting in these ways. The problem is, I'm kinda of stuck for monetizing and advertising the forum, and it's here where my inexperience is detrimental to any potential success. Google Adsense won't accept us as we feature sexual health and self-harm advice discussions, and that was my hopeful main source of revenue. I only wish to earn so much to cover the costs of the forum, roughly £100 a year, and whilst I *should* be able to do that with our paid subscriptions/donations, in order for me to branch out with advertising I need to earn a little more to afford to do that. I've done my research and submitted sitemaps, added our website to free directories, got us a good meta rating (title = 100%, keywords = 100%, description = 88%), so I feel as though I'm on the right track, and as a newcomer not doing too badly. Can anyone make any suggestions as to what else I should do to help increase traffic and revenue, preferably with minimal cost? I know you must get this all the time, but I don't really have much of a clue what I'm doing; I dived into the deep end as it were. I'm sure the old saying "Spend money to make money" comes to play here, but I don't earn a whole lot myself and needless to say spending nothing is better. Thanks for reading my massive message, look forward to your replies (and go easy)! Website URL = www.confab-it.com/forums/
Hi, I suggest you take some time to read different threads on this forum that maybe help for you. I don't want you losing all your money, since you don't know what you are doing yet. This site has a lot of great info. There are a bunch of people that are already making money online on here, you can probably learn a lot from just reading on what they have posted. Since your site is a forum, I would get some SEO done on it. This will get you some organic traffic. If you decide to get SEO i can help you out. Please send me a PM.
Hey mate, thanks for the response; I will definitely do what you suggested, although I've already done a fair amount of searching already. I've seen SEO software for vBulletin for about $100, but I dare say there's alternatives to that? Any tips specific for my forum?
What kind of SEO are you paying for that cost $100? The main thing is getting your site ranked. So to do that you can promote your site through social media optimization. So you should promote it through facebook, twitter. You should also build backlinks. We offer some of these services for a lot less then 100.
Try bidvertiser, it's just like Adsense only teh payout is only 10 bucks so you get your money quicker. As far as traffic, write out a traffic strategy/action plan, and stick to it daily. Look for high leverage traffic sources where you get more traffic for less work. I suggest a social exchange site like addmefast or youlikehits. you can get other people to tweet your links and stuff like that, it's a great way to get other people promoting you. good luck.
Have you looked into Amazon affiliate links? It's free, and the payout starts at $10. It'll take time to build up a nice profit, but it works.
Keep up the good work. Not a bad start. I wouldn't worry about monetizing just yet. But when you do you can either sell ad space or use someone other than adsense, there are countless others. I also suggest offering different levels of membership on the forum. Add special functions to users like allowing them to add a sig with a link to their site or able to change their username or whatever the options are and charge a subscription fee of $1-2. I have a large forum where I charge $1 and you get access to the special members section and it's a monthly subscription and right now I have 2200 subscribers out of my 30,000 members. Some aren't even active but they still get the $1 taken out until they cancel. (if they complain I would just refund the whole amount when they stopped participating on the forum) Sorry for my run on's hah. Hope it helps tho
I'm not paying for any SEO at the moment, but I have seen one for $100 which was called vBSEO. As for promoting through Facebook and Twitter; I have been doing and I'm getting likes/followers etc, but no one actually registers to the site. All in good time I guess. I took your advice and gave it a go; so far so good, but tell me - is there any real benefit to using these sites? Most of them all seem to be fake accounts. Yup, got one at the top of the site; I just don't feel confident in anyone actually using it. It helps. I do have a subscription actually; £10 for a year, and thus far one person has signed up so I'm not doing too badly. The way I see it, if I get 10 people to sign up that's £100 and I've covered the costs then; I'm mostly just concerned about traffic.
I would look into other ad networks. Also, set up a mini free marketing plan for yourself. Might sound silly, but it really helps to track your promotional activity in a spreadsheet. Sign up to a few forums that you can add your sig to, then post in the forums everyday, and start conversations with people on twitter/facebook fan pages everyday. The more activity the better. Overtime you will grow.
Besides the SEO work, you should also do something else. What if you rank top 10 in Google, people enter your forum and can`t find anything interesting? So you should start thinking what people want to read/discguss there and create some threads/article that will persuade visitors to join the forum and the disgussion.
Every suggestions are good but you should maintain your rules also...It will help you to stay here longer.
Ultimate SEO download (no opt-in, straight to a ZIP with the .PDF): http://ubuntuone.com/4b36beoDzFcvjFnVnV4xpv It's 311 pages and covers 12 types of SEO. The beginning half of the book will be really informative for a newbie. Some things will be recap, but it's an excellent explanation of how SEO works as well as how to set realistic expectations. The 2nd half of the book covers all 12 of the methods. It also has a series of videos for you to follow along with. I'd recommend watching through the intro videos & etc, then deciding which type of SEO you want to focus on. Once you've decided, watch that video, read that chapter, and focus on it entirely. After 2 weeks of solid effort (or so), move on to the next task. (The 12 methods are: Authority (probably not relevant) LSI Site-Wide On-Page Blogging Local (probably not relevant) Search Results Off-Site Viral Social Video Press Release **Wordpress (bonus chapter) (probably not relevant) )