Oh yes, I need some suggestions. Again. Sorry! :razz:

First off, I want to ask you guys a question. I’ll be releasing the answers as a report (free, don’t worry) and using it to get a little bit of exposure for my list. :)

Why aren’t you making MORE money online?

Some of you are making pennies, some just enough to live on, some so much that you’ll never have to go to work again. However, no matter how much you’re making – you could be making more. So why aren’t you? Lack of time, lack of money, lack of skills are some of the ones I’ve heard – I’m going to talk about dealing with those, but if there are any others you guys have, let me know and I’ll talk about them too. You can tell me through here, Twitter, or the various instant messaging services. :)

Okay, that’s done… now on to the main point:

To Forum Or Not To Forum?

Yes, this is a poorly reworked Shakespeare quote. When you’re on holiday, it’s hard to be too creative.

I have been working with niche websites + proxies, and they’ve made a few dollars – however, they are extremely boring… mainly because there is no interaction. I’ve always preferred community orientated websites, which is why I run this blog despite it not really making enough to be worth my time spent on it – this is also why I wanted to add a forum to Blog Premiere and have slightly neglected the front page.

Anyways, I paid in advance for a forum design yesterday, and although it hasn’t been started yet I am heavily considering getting another forum done. The idea is a forum that discusses MMO tips – geared at newbies. Here’s the reasons:

Convenience

Yesterday alone, I got six essay-type emails – emails that had quite a few questions, and emails that would take at least half an hour if not more to answer. Mainly because of the release of my new eBook. A lot of the questions were similar, but the emails were different enough from each other that I couldn’t send a generic email to everyone.

I probably will get around to answering those emails – not today, as the football is on, but over the next week. However, were I to setup a forum for this, all I would have to do is post a thread with the basics talked about, and then people could ask shorter questions through that. I do not have the time, and I will never have the time (or energy) to spend 3-6 hours a days answering email so a forum could save me a lot of time and allow others to chip in with the answers.

Newbie Friendly

One of the biggest problems with currently large forums is that members, especially those that have been around for a while tend to get their heads confused with their behinds and their level of prick-ness increases with the amount of posts made. I’m talking about newbie bashing. This is often seen on large forums, especially when newbies ask questions – now, I agree that some newbies deserve whatever they get, but it could always been done in a politer way. :)

Blog Premiere currently suffers from none of that, partly because there are not enough threads there to shout at people to use the search function ( :razz: ) and partly because there are only friendly people there (I have banned / not invited anyone that could be a problem).

A forum where newbies helped each other, and thus no one was better off than anyone else would certainly be a great help. Note, that I do not expect this to grow big (although obviously wouldn’t mind if it did) but it would be another place that people could goto for advice.

Increase My Online Worth

Yes, this reason is purely selfish – having a forum with contributing members is worth a lot more than having an email account full of answered emails. Basically, this becomes a saleable asset – 9MB.com sold for near $9,000 a while ago so it would be an interesting task to see if I could top that.

Fun

Building communities is always a lot more “fun” and doesn’t seem like work at all compared to say building and writing articles for a niche website. I think I could grow a blog or a forum a lot faster than your average “standard” website. :)

Two features, I’m thinking of that will make this easier to run

a) Member fee

Everyone that has more than 100 posts at Blog Premiere or is on the top commentator’s list at TUK will get in free, as will anyone that blogs about it. However, for others – I was thinking of adding a nominal member fee- this will keep out spammers. Something like $5/year – nothing too much but it would help save a lot of time. (Only the most die hard spammer would pay money to spam a forum, or that’s what I’m hoping at least :razz: )

b) Posting Requirement

I’m not sure about this, so I thought I’d run it by you guys – I wanted to make it a requirement that people post. Yes, I know this is opening it up for people not joining, but the whole point of a community is that you give a little, take a little. If everyone gives a little, you can take a lot. Nothing major, something like ten posts a week. I do that in ten minutes on Blog Premiere, so surely you guys can spare a few minutes of your time to put in ten posts weekly :razz:

This forum will not have any fluff apart from the usual general chat section – there will be two sections; a make money online section and a general chat section. The MMO section will be broken down into various things – affiliate programs, blogging, niche marketing; you get the idea.

I would rather this stay small and help as many people as possible than grow large and become like one of the huge webmaster forums out there today. If it could grow large while helping people, that would be great; we will see though.

What do you guys think?

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