About 5 years ago I was in an accident which left me home-ridden for a long period of time. Out of sheer boredom really I turned to a lot of different hobbies and the main one that held me was gaming - I even competed and won considerable amounts of money playing Call of Duty 2 and Halo: Combat Evolved. Ever since my stint as a competitive gamer I have followed new releases very closely and I still maintain contacts which I made at that time - this proves fruitful a lot of the time in the way of me gaining inside knowledge. I want to start a blog coupled with a forum. From this base I want to produce my own rumour mill (I already have three long time friends prepped to start producing material for the site). Can anyone show me articles etc that will show me how to go about this and feed lots of traffic into my site which will allow profit to flow? 1. I need to know what domain to go under, where to get it. 2. I need tips on how to set the site up, should I have it designed for me? 3. Should I use marketing websites to aid me? 4. Who should I let advertise on my site? Should I have pay to click? 5. What forum builder should I use? Again should I have it designed for me? 6. How do I maintain a forum fanbase? [6 seems to be the hard-nut in the process...I've been told that sometimes it doesn't matter what quality material you produce on your website, sometimes things aren't meant to be and your fanbase will die out no matter what.] 7. How much money could I be looking at making per month, and how much of my input would that require (ie, money)? 8. Should I target another market? What topics and subject are popular right now? 9. How do I go about making merchandise (shirts, patches etc)? And how much money should I be looking to spend on this?
Would you happen to be Chimpae? I was also a competitive gamer in CoD2 and your name reminded me of him. Anyhow, I have turned more to internet marketing over the last few years. Let me try to answer some of your questions (you have a lot of them!). 1: The domain name is your choice. I would do some research and find what people are searching for. Ultimately though, it won't matter if you have good content. Still, I think a good name is important. I recommend Godaddy.com (Do a search for a coupon to get your domain a little cheaper). 2: If you have no clue about design, I would get someone else to set it up for you. I would also instruct them to do basic SEO techniques on it to ensure it gets good SERP's. 3: Marketing websites? I would probably say no as the sound of it just makes me think of a scam. You can market your website yourself if you do enough reading about how to do it. 4: I would probably start out on Adsense which puts relative ads on the site for you. Generally, you won't find any direct advertisers until your website has been around a while. So don't fret too much about this. Adsense might pull in a little bit for you though if you are getting traffic. 5: vBulletin is generlaly the industry standard for a good forum. I think you could probably modify the colors yourself and get it matching your website. You might get it installed by someone else (you could do this for as little as $5.00 in the BST section here). 6: Maintenance of a forum is easy until you get a lot of users. Again, not something to worry about at this piont. Just ensure you are the most active person on the forum, and your forum will succeed. Your fanbase will not die out unless you yourself get uninterestedi n the site. Generally, once your website is up, the only thing that will happen is grow. Now, it will die if you stop updating it and doing the typical things you were doing to cause it to grow in the first place. 7: GotFrag does quite well, I'm sure. But they have tons of website traffic. You should probably expect to make near nothing (maybe even in the hole) for a good while. It takes time to build a website up with return visitors. 8: Do whatever you are passionate about. I'm passionate about gaming too, but just haven't played much of anything in a while. There is room in the market for people who are interested and familiar with competitive gaming. 9: There are some online companies that specialize in customized gear. cafepress I believe is one of them. However, based on my understanding they are pretty cheaply made. It depends on what you want to do with the gear itself, but you might just look at local companies. Sometimes they are the cheapest.
Hello there! Let me give you some advices... 1. I need to know what domain to go under, where to get it. It's not really a matter of what domain to go under, it's more about what you are interested in.. You should check which keyword works best and have not so competition so that once you choose this domain name, you can promote it through adword. 2. I need tips on how to set the site up, should I have it designed for me? Well, there are some programs like VB to create a forum. 3. Should I use marketing websites to aid me? Why don't you create a contest on your future forum rewarding people who reffer new visitors to your site? 4. Who should I let advertise on my site? Should I have pay to click? It all depends on you. If you want to monetize your forum to pay the hosting fees and make a living from it then advertise on it. If you just want a forum as a hobby, don't advertise it now. 5. What forum builder should I use? Again should I have it designed for me? VB is great for building a Forum I think. It's always better that someone design it for you. Concerning the Logo, you can make a logo design contest so that you'll gather more design that could interest you rather than buying a design from one particular person. It offers you more choices. 6. How do I maintain a forum fanbase? [6 seems to be the hard-nut in the process...I've been told that sometimes it doesn't matter what quality material you produce on your website, sometimes things aren't meant to be and your fanbase will die out no matter what.] Don't worry about it, if you have a good webhosting, it won't be a problem. 7. How much money could I be looking at making per month, and how much of my input would that require (ie, money)? I can't reply to this question, it will all depends on your traffic and list subscription. 8. Should I target another market? What topics and subject are popular right now? What was the market you targeted? Write "video game" "make money online" "work from home" or anything you are interested in, then go on google search engine and check which of these topics is the most popular. 9. How do I go about making merchandise (shirts, patches etc)? And how much money should I be looking to spend on this? I don't quite understand what you mean, could you be more precise please? For the price, you should ask a compagny specialied in those merchandises...
my advice is simple...find a reliable hosting company...use a good forum software and advertise well..
Getting a forum up is a lot harder than it sounds. I imagine there are already a lot of good forums for those games. If so, why should people go to your forum? If you can't think up a good answer to this question, then it's going to be hard to get it off the ground. The start is especially important. No one wants to post in a dead forum. So you've gotta do something to get it started right away, then keep doing more things to build momentum. My advice, stick with the blog until you have a decent following, then announce that you're launching your forum. Worry about monetisation once it's off the ground. Sean