I have a website, "auto related" but its not up to my standards so im going to shut it down and place a forum there. but, im wondering if a blog would be better. With a forum, people would interact better and blog might get old quick and more work. Money wise, which one would be better for long term?
This is actually a great question, and has me thinking..wonderful work! Firstly, I think it really comes down to personal choice and really what you want out the site. If you're focused on money wise, you may be best to create a forum for the pure fact of what you already said, 'create a community out of it' -- then, once you have a good base of people coming back, you can sign advertising deals with advertising companies or automotive businesses to display banner ads for their website or resell their products. With Invision Power Board and vBulletin both possessing good SEO structure, a forum should sustain in the SERPs well, providing you have a lot of content going and many visitors heading there on a regular basis. A blog on the other hand, will require more work long term but will have an advantage if you write content regularly as Google promotes blogs far better because they "generally" come out with unique content quicker and not just chit chat. Also, once your blog gains authority and having good quality content, chances are people are more likely to link to it naturally. Either way will work...just depends on your business model.
Thanks. My goal to accomplish with a website is give people advice on buying cars and answer their questions when they have some. I been in the auto business for a while so i know a thing or two. Since auto related ads pay good, im debating between a forum or a blog. I allready have a blog attached to one of my older sites and its doing very good, i also have a forum there as well and only get 5% of traffic that the blog gets. But maybe if you have thousands of threads in a forum it might equal out??? been thinking about this the whole day...
Why don't you do both? Have say the blog at the main index for the site so you can keep updating it regularly with news and updates but have the forum in the back end (on your sidebar or as a page link) with people talking about autos and asking questions etc.
Dont know, too much work i guess. Also, my freind has a PR 4 Blog about relationships and advice, he gets thousands of UV every month and only makes about 10 to 20 bucks a month from it. The amount of time he spends on it in my book would be counted as waist of time, thats what im afraid of. Heres the other thing, which users would click on ads more, forum readers and users or blog readers? Any idea?
Auto forums tend to do quite well. You can make money from direct advertisers if the audience is big enough and it's niche enough.
from forums, you will have conversation with the audience, blogs & forums will both give you good traffic, i would suggest to go with forums....
If you are looking to get ranked in google and other search engines .... i would suggest you to go for blogs. Blogs can be customized in a million ways. You will still be able to go all the stuff you want in forum with a wordpress blog. It will look more like a website than a blog. As per earning revenue from ads, it depends a lot on the placement of ads, keywords, traffic and lot other criteria.
With short and general keyword you will have good traffic only if your rankings are good. And this traffic will be a bit irrelevant and general to you