My Journey towards 1500$/Month from My Education Community website

Hello Dear DP Geniuses
Im love to become an entrepreneur and establishing a brand that represents its niche. I really need to steady my financial status by having a consistent income through online business.
So Two months back i decided to start an online community forum about Engineering Professionals where they can discuss about their doubts, clarify issues regarding to their final year projects, donate/request e-books, make use of the Fresher Job section.

This site will be mostly based on Indian visitors(students, professors,lectures + people who search about engineering related terms) so i had registered a .in domain. I have not a very big capital to invest hence i decided to use my all time favorite forum PHPBB but my wishes doesnt stop there i wanted it to make nearly all the options that Vbulletin has.
So i managed to install many MOD's for myself some of the works i had done on my site are

• Quick Reply,
• Cash Mod(not advanced one just a simple cash mod for gifting 10 points for replies,20 for threads)
• Attractive web 2 smiles
• Animated online status
• Attractive Rank images which looks professional
• Last Topic Title on index page
• PHBBSEO (which i considered to be one of the most important one)
• A Good professional looking theme
• optimized topic, forum, index pages title

Right now i feel this is sufficient for now and may be needs upgrade later,
So i have organized 6 members to start firing posts to make the forum happen. i motivating the members nicely and 3 of them are posting really great.
till today its been 45 days gone since they started posting now the total posts are 5000 posts and total topics 3303 and users counting to 160 80% are fake created by us

This is a initial phase to ready the community for marketing. Im targeting 15K to 20K posts with 1500 users to market.

My goal is to start monetizing my site from 6 months after the site is started and make it earn minimum 1500$ per month so that i can give back to moderators who are really working hard for the site. So far 2 months have gone and am starting online marketing from tomorrow.

I will be updating my status as frequent the updates happens on my site and i hope you sweet people will encourage me and give me your valuable suggestions at my each step i would be really thankful for you.
See you soon at the next update.

 

i doubt you will make $1500 with a forum

 

It sounds like a small niche. You mentioned monetizing the site. My site does 500,000 pages per month after one year, and I make about $300 a month between selling ads and Google Adwords.

What's your monetization plan? With a niche forum you would be hard pressed to bankroll more then $50-100 from Google each month...maybe $200-300 max.

 

$1500 is not impossible and can easily be done. but you neee to put in ads at the right places with right color combinations and the traffic to forums should be in the range of 200000 pageview per day.

 

@iwantmusik,Muscleandbrawn - I'm not going to depend only on CPI, CPC ads my idea is to make the forum so big and based on the active member base i will approach institutions and colleges to sponsor our site and i will also use Google ads parallel.

My forum mostly talks about Engineering study materials, discussions, jobs so the majority of users are studying UG Courses + I have a PG section too and i hope if we approach PG institutions for sponsorship they will support us. I'm also thinking of getting sponsorship for each category like Computer science, Mechanical etc.

@outshineworld - Yes the placement and the color matching of the ads will definitely give us more income, as my forum is a education and students are more probably clicks the ads they see.

Thanks very much for the Replies.

 

Today am going to start with a press release, the press release will be little creative so that it will grasp students to take part into my community, i have planned to offer them ranks based on their quality of the contribution and believe me Indian students are not very well familiar with forums so i hope they will love this nature.
+ Bookmarking the press release on all major bookmarking sites.

I'm aiming to write 2 press releases today and will be publishing only on Free Press Release sites, PressReleasepoint has a dedicated indian category i hope it will give me some boost.

 

Looks like you have to work harder. Some people do earn that kind of money, I am sure you can too.

 

Thanks webcosmo i will for sure

 

Good luck on that man, it will probably happen in 6 months or not, but if you stick to your goals anything is possible. So far you have a great plan.

 

Good luck. Hope you can accomplish your goals. Keep at it!

 

Thanks for your encouragement @Jessicalore, dukeofism my strategy on this project is work harder untill get success and work even harder after success

Update:
Just came for an update, as i said its been 2 months since i started my site google just smells my site and gave PR of 0 my target is to get PR3 within 6 months. Alexa is now 447025
Have a nice day friends.

 

have you thought of contacting local Uni's and getting them involved?

 

i believe you can do it,

actually i hope you can do it, to show everyone that it is possible

 

Am so happy to get such a good encouragement i will definitely make this possible guys.
Thanks @Volume,Bhuang

@Volume- Sorry i didn't get you,what you mean by Uni's ?

 

you should put up some banners or flyer in the local college and make put some lottery type of system for people that register ...

like win a free ipod !

 

@N30 I already thought about promoting via college events but i have no such capital to invest
but i will definitely do that after earning some bucks through my site.

 

Submitted an article awaiting for its approval.
Submitted to press release point and bookmarking it to buzz,propeller etc.

 

I hope you succeed bro. Do not be discourage by the problems that will surely come your way. Persevere and do not loose hope no matter what happens. You can achieve your dream if you really work hard at it. Do not dwell too much on naysayers and unbelievers. Believe and achieve is my motto.

 

You are motivating me to start my own forum!. Hey good luck and i wish you the best

 

Exactly, Thanks bro. Once we have a site that is representing its whole niche there is no barrier for earnings, and the matter is i need to make it reach all students and lecturers, once am satisfied with my on line marketing i will go for off line marketing to reach my site to all those who associated in education industry.

Well you have to, Come lets travel together bro
Status Update:
Article is still in queue on artcilesbase and am going to give EZA a shot + another two new press releases + 3 more articles + Lots of bookmarking for the submitted articles and press releases (Approved ones)