I’d appreciate it if you read this whole post and gave me your feedback. It could benefit you big time! if you provide feedback that gets implemented.
Soliloquy: There’s a saying that “familiarity breeds contempt” and the more I get involved with YOU, my readers, the more feedback I get which is good in a way because it helps me realize things that could be better. I also get some feedback from people who aren’t marketing experts telling me how the blog should be run (like the tech savants who advise me with good ideas like adding stats tracking software, optimize htaccess, paginate comments, do multi-page sitemaps, make comments own unique area for added content that gets indexed better display my RSS readership, offer social bookmarking icons, cloak your aff links you’re losing tons of sales, offer bonuses etc…..)
Fact is most programmers and tech types are probably a few dozen IQ points above me, on average, but most don’t “get” the marketing side of things, which is something that has to be taught elsewhere and not on this blog here….
I’m trying to build an authority site here, where people can go for legitimate reviews and seo tips and I think I run a pretty good blog here whilst also trying to maintain a Purple Cow mentality to my overall business.
“In his book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, Seth Godin says that the key to success is to find a way to stand out–to be the purple cow in a field of monochrome Holsteins. Godin himself may be the best example of how this theory works: The marketing expert is a demigod on the Web, a best-selling author, highly sought after lecturer, successful entrepreneur, respected pundit and high-profile blogger. He is uniquely respected for his understanding of the Internet, and his essays and opinions are widely read and quoted online and off.”
Forbes.com
HOWEVER….
As feedback and private opinions have revealed to me, this blog is becoming a bit of a service, not just a fat affiliate site that offers link building tips, seo tips and reviews link building services.
So, the responsibility is mounting, the workload is increasing and yes this blog is a bit of a service to the community!
But I DO have other websites to attend to, and testing out crappy services, while helpful in letting you know the real deal, also puts me in a “going-nowhere” mode. I’m not complaining since it’s gratifying to receive thanks for what we do here.
Suggestions made:
“Change your theme to a pro-blogger” look -
DONE, Got customized Thesis done by Shivendu at TechnoZeast.com, an up-and-coming programmer/marketer from India. He customized a Thesis theme for me, has made me some plugins, and will be a partner of mine in the forum/membership, if it s gets created (more on that later).
Thanks Shivendu
“Get rid of that stupid-a**, annoying exit pop-up!”
OK, maybe the feedback wasn’t this vehement, but yes, exit popups are annoying, especially the last one I was using so I switched it over to something less intrusive that won’t annoy regular visitors so much. The goal with a “high-traffic site is to call attention to the things you want your readers to know about whilst to ticking off regular readers too much.
Regular readers are regular readers for a reason,content must be “OK” so it’s a good idea to not tick off “my peeps” too much whilst maintaining some normal marketing practices. Far better to get a subscriber on to a newsletter than it is to lose a reader forever.
Anon (reader) …thanks for the nudge here on getting a new/better exit popup in place. It seems to work better and I put it on several sites already and list building has picked up a bit, thanks.
Review more services -
I’ve interviewed/hired/partnered with some people to help me out with this. So far I/we have tested and reviewed about 20 link building tools and services, with more to come of course.
NOTE: There are plenty of services that work well right now, TODAY so waiting for results from me, while prudent of you, only delays your success with the services I currently recommend. As a marketer, I totally understand that you might be interested in only one particular service because you got an email about it or something. You may have received an email that makes the new hot XYZ service sounds like THE service to get and your mindset right now is focused only on that…
You’re feeling impatient, most likely trust my reviews but the reality of things is; most services aren’t that effective after 5-6 months and most services are the same (blog/site networks filled with sub-standard sites dishing out NoFollow links). As a marketing coach, I know when someone is going to succeed, I know the mentality it takes to succeed with something therefore all I can say is; go with what has proven to work, do not delay your success due to an improper mindset and/or pending review…
Write more posts -
WTF, there’s almost 150 posts on this site, what more do you need!?
I write about what I think people need to know about, not what people want to know about, so keeping with my Purple Cow mentality, I may/may not listen to suggestions for new content ideas, but feel free to make suggestions anyway, seriously.
At the risk of diverting your attention, here are some non-review posts you should have read, or should read soon.
How To Get More Backlinks From Article Marketing -you’ll get more backlinks form site/blog networks and article directories this way….
Effective + Automated Link wheels Set up – think about automation, effective link building strrategies, and the sales process and never forget the reader’s/buyer’s mentality.
Do Guest Bloggers Get Good Backlinks With Guest Author Posts? – how to really get those authority, relevant backlinks that also leads to targeted direct traffic
On Page Optimization Factors that can help with your link building - things to do to make your site respond better to the backlinks you’ll be generating
How to maximize your on site optimization - your link building efforts can produce more results for you in a much quicker manner if you follow these on-page seo tips, AKA global navigation structure, AKA site architecture.
Duplicate Content Penalty Myths and Some Tests I’m Running - Discover the truth/reality of duplicate content penalties for yourself and put any questions you have about this to rest, for good
What else do you want to know about for seo, link building and what-not?
Start a forum, Start a membership site, Start a chat room
This is really where I will be most receptive to suggestions…
- The newbies want a membership site to learn REAL SEO from beginning to end.
- More advanced SEO types want to talk about SEO in a forum and to connect with other knowledgeable SEO-ers about link building and SEO stuff.
- And some people want a chat room, because they still have lots of questions about all of this stuff.
I think a paid forum with chatroom features would serve all three purposes (chat room, forum, membership site).
Here’s the outline/rough draft I have in mind for a forum:
Free forum using V Bulletin Publishing suite, which will allow you to create a community of your own, have your own blogs, community profiles etc….
Paid forum for those who want extra stuff like how-to videos, seo scripts, link building bots, other automation tools etc…
A No-BS zone throughout entire forum… the forums I go to are filled with bad advice, old advice, or mis-leading representations of results gained form SEO methods employed, so this forum, since it will basically be MY forum, will not allow any of that, and I expect to be kicking out or banning a lot of people who are spreading or regurgitating misinformation.
Forums can hurt you in many ways; can suck up a lot of your time, you can be led astray and down the wrong path bid Bad SEO advice, and most importantly…hanging out or lurking in forums is usually an excuse for not taking action with your own business.
Here’s what paid forum would have:
Free software, bots, plugins - We’d create what we think are useful bots, scripts, plugins, and tutorials on our end and you’d get these as part of your membership.
Video training on how-to stuff for the newbies and active SEO-ers.
Special Offers?: Not sure how useful that would be since most people offering discounts or special offers for SEO related stuff would go to Warrior Forum first, then Digital Point and the best deals would be obtained there, at least for now.
Note: The Warrior Forum recently decided to disallow any Warrior Special Offers having to do with services that do stuff like breaking captchas or anything even close to BlackHat stuff, so maybe the forum will have a section for this kind of thing after all.
Affiliate program: since this is a paid forum, we’d try to offset your fees by incorporating an affiliate program into it so more people can get to know about the forum.
Self-moderation: I sure as heck don’t want to spend all my spare time moderating a forum, so there will be some voting, reporting and stuff like that as part of the forum features, and banning, too if a person is particularly persistent in spreading bad information/flaming, not following forum rules etc….
What are your thoughts on this, what would you like to see/expect from a paid forum like this?
What continued value would a paid forum provide that would make you remain a happy subscriber?
Change the way you write your reviews:
Some people that are knowledgeable about competition levels for phrases and terms and what could and should be expected for results from backlinking to a term have suggested that I depict in my reviews not just the before and after results and general information on competition levels (easy, medium, hard) but also to depict information such as
- # of backlinks prior to testing out new service
- # of allintitle, allinurl competing sites
- PR of competing sites
- Age of domains competing with
- # of links obtained
- # of links that “stuck”
- etc…
To be straight up with you, I hate to templatize anything and I think that what people really want to know is the general sense of competition levels, did the service work, and is it recommended?
Most online readers just want me to cut to the chase, but others want more details.
I’m most interested in your feedback on
- what you want in a paid forum
- how reviews could better serve you in making a decision
Download Targeted Subscribers Wordpress Plugin Here
{ 33 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Dan
No need to repeat how great this blog is. As such the paid forums should be more of the same.
Firstly I love this theme, not glossy or filled with a lot of distracting cool graphics. So if you can maintain the simplese possible theme with the same font size.
With more and more services being tested the main challenge would be to ensure that the right content is not missed. So obviously tagging is important but more of an active menu selection. A user comes to the site and should be able to select by a)ranking of service b)price c)category(blog only, article only,both,other). All in all it would be nice if there is an active catalogue of SEO services with your full testing and score (Pretty much like the current setup) and also user reviews and scores.
Another aspect of the new blog/site would be SEO trends. Which systems are no longer working. As you said a service if not upgraded or evolved by its creators will last only around 6 months. So you might have reviewed a good service a while back and had an excellent socre but is no longer on your recommended list. This is also vital. Maybe implied within the first point of reviews
Best outsorcing service for each SEO task. I found myself searcing for three months for some one who can do Ezines for less than $7 or do meta tag generation or write legitimate/proper 200 word snippets. These sort of searches took me 2 month. Including first paying then to find job not done propertyl. So if members of the forum can share best outsourcing services for SEO.
A detailed eBook every quarte or so about a specific SEO technique. Could be how to use linkwheels effectively (mid 2010 as opposed to outdated data of late 2009). Or how to do SEO with only a bugdet of X dollars a month. Basically just any topic that can be expanded on in greater details. These ebooks you can sell for $20.00, I would not mind paying for the best advice.
RADICAL IDEA how ever much you charge for the paid member ship, it would be cool if say $50 goes to ensuring that the test or research you do is accurate within 80 percent. So in other words we as the members of your forum “sponsor” the tests knowing that they can be delivered in 2 weeks and with meaningful/insightful data + findings from that data. These funds can eliviate you doing a lot of trivial stuff that take time and donot add any value to SEO findings/conclusions/recommendations that you should be making.
Also what would be nice would be to get the profiles of each member, what is their technical specialities or marketing specialities. Like you mentioned networking.
Thats all for now, more ideas will come later
Replies in bold:
With more and more services being tested the main challenge would be to ensure that the right content is not missed. So obviously tagging is important but more of an active menu selection. A user comes to the site and should be able to select by
a)ranking of service
b)price
c)category(blog only, article only,both,other).
All in all it would be nice if there is an active catalogue of SEO services with your full testing and score (Pretty much like the current setup) and also user reviews and scores.
Hmm, good points here, I was think of adding more to the list of recommended services broken down by price point because the more I review, the more good services I encounter, so maybe a longer list of recommended services broken down by price point would work. I’d intended to this this a while ago, but didn’t want to offer an “over-selection”, breakdown by price points would help give more options.
Another aspect of the new blog/site would be SEO trends. Which systems are no longer working. As you said a service if not upgraded or evolved by its creators will last only around 6 months. So you might have reviewed a good service a while back and had an excellent socre but is no longer on your recommended list. This is also vital. Maybe implied within the first point of reviews
This is perfect for a forum then but I don’t really trust other people’s reviews on SEO knowledge to make their feedback valid! How many people share amazing results for a term with little to no competition, how many people say a service doesn’t work when the competition is way too tough to expect anything anyways, and/or they didn’t practice good on site optimization in the first place? I think people should consider the source when reading a review, so if reviews are put on a forum, there may need to be some criteria for posting anything.
Best outsorcing service for each SEO task. I found myself searcing for three months for some one who can do Ezines for less than $7 or do meta tag generation or write legitimate/proper 200 word snippets. These sort of searches took me 2 month. Including first paying then to find job not done propertyl. So if members of the forum can share best outsourcing services for SEO.
Good idea, we will definitely have an outsourcing section to the forum for writers, site builders and what-not. However, and I might sound like a control freak or over-protective person, but there will have to be a “blood-in, blood out” method in order for outsourcers to even be approve din first place. In other words, they’ll have to prove themselves to me first by doing an assigned task properly. Same goes for any special offers of services being offered.
A detailed eBook every quarte or so about a specific SEO technique. Could be how to use linkwheels effectively (mid 2010 as opposed to outdated data of late 2009). Or how to do SEO with only a bugdet of X dollars a month. Basically just any topic that can be expanded on in greater details. These ebooks you can sell for $20.00, I would not mind paying for the best advice.
OK, this can be done, too. I’m always experimenting anyways and people are offering their techniques for sale anyways, so easy enough to rewrite and re-distribute if those methods work, they’ll just be dumbed-down to the nitty gritty no screenshots nonsense
RADICAL IDEA how ever much you charge for the paid member ship, it would be cool if say $50 goes to ensuring that the test or research you do is accurate within 80 percent. So in other words we as the members of your forum “sponsor” the tests knowing that they can be delivered in 2 weeks and with meaningful/insightful data + findings from that data. These funds can alleviate you doing a lot of trivial stuff that take time and do not add any value to SEO findings/conclusions/recommendations that you should be making.
Not sure about this we’ll have to Skype chat to discuss further
Also what would be nice would be to get the profiles of each member, what is their technical specialities or marketing specialities. Like you mentioned networking.
I agree, sort of like a “why listen to me” bio, or resource box or just a forum voting mechanism, maybe we’ll have a voting mechanism/algorithm that’s heavily weighted, whereby the trusted members have more weight behind their votes or something like that.
Thats all for now, more ideas will come later
Thanks, keep them coming. I also wanted to make this a revenue-sharing forum but have no clue is this is viable, worth doing etc.. Again, less banners and ads and distractions leads to more focus and implementation on members’ end of things
The forum question is always a tough one. My experience has been that a new forum has a lot of activity and then dies off whether it is free or paid. Once it has a name for itself like the warriorforum then is just sort of has a life of its own. I think what would work would be a monthly membership, with time released content and stuff like plugins, software etc. Setting a price that is affordable and high enough that it keeps people engaged from month to month.
Maybe a way for users to also provide plugins software that keeps people coming back as there will always be something juicy to offer.
Maybe have 10-15 people that get a free membership with the deal that they take a section of the forum and maintain that, not too sure how that would work.
I think for you Daniel, however you decide to do the forum it is going to require work, but what works for me would be some sort of forum that is always adding a cool add on thing like software or cool plugin for my wordpress blog that is secret and helps me make more money.
As far as the reviews go, I think what would be great would be an initial post on the product that gives you the done and dirty it sucks or it rocks and here’s why ie. My post was #15 on google stop all linkbuilding except for this linkbuilding service and in a month I am now sitting at #8 because of the links built in this network.
Then take you time to write a much more detailed scientific post on how those results were achived via a video or images. This way it helps the people that are on the fence and gives the analyticals something more to digest over.
I am sure I will have more thoughts later, but hopefully this is a start.
Thanks Alan, good points that sort of address my “fears” about this. Lots of work need to get it going, lots of work to maintain it/moderate it, then more work to keep it active and on-going. There’ll be an affiliate program for the paid forum and I consider it necessary for expansion.
Hey Dan,
I’m in if you start a paid forum, as long as it’s reasonably priced. This is one of the few sites I read regularly so keep up the good work.
Great job changing the theme, it’s been driving me nuts
Shelby
Hi Daniel,
This is an interesting post but …
Seems like you have already set your mind on a forum so, the feedback appears to be on what,how,etc, etc of the forum.
Here are my two cents (probably not) worth of wisdom.
One, there are a lot of forums out there and usually, you will find that there are one or two that most will use. The rest, if paid subscriber only, will only be used for a short time, unless the value is way way above the time spent on them. Is your forum going to be so great that it will attract subscribers? Will it continue to be improved enough to keep those subscribers a long time?
Two, as you said, there are a lot of subscribers that will contribute to the forum, but their info is worthless. If you use self-monitoring and those worthless info contributors are the monitors, you will end up with garbage which will give you the end result of no contributing subscribers.
Three, if you invite (almost)experts into monitoring, you will need to at the very least monitor those – best deal, out of a bad situation. That means that in one form or another you will be spending time on the forum.
Four, forums are typically used to boost page ranking for the contributor, at least that’s what I’m told by every guru infoebook, and there’s nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is that you could potentially have a bunch of subscribers using that as a way to boost their page rank, and you would welcome them, as the traffic would need to be fed somehow, but when the forum matures, there start the rules, no page ranking boost is the first that gets turned off. No spamming is also enforced although it wasn’t before. The primadonna monitors start deleting posts that they consider offensive, because (1) the poster is advertising blatantly, or (2)ripping off some product that did not meet his or her expectations, or (3)because the moderator simply wants to show his power. This is something that will end up turning people off and will require a lot of effort to counter.
I’m not sure if the forum is something I would be involved with as I personally have gained little from forums. Am working on my first $100, so that should tell you where I’m coming from. (Do make just over 60 cents/day on google) but that is about it. My main concern, and I think you expressed it, has to do with how much time one can end up spending at the forum, and not accomplish anything else. Will the ROI(return on investment) be worth it? For me, the main goal I have is finding what works and how do I put it into play so that I can stop and use the forums but until that happens, forums are a hit-and-real-miss for the most part.
Dan, I wish you the best in your venture. I think it is exciting to be at the beginning of a great adventure and for us, and every other reader here, this is a great time, as we kind of will experience your pain and will also enjoy your successes, which based on what you already do will be certain to come.
God bless,
joe
I’d prefer a paid forum, but I’m not sure to participate.
Please no videos except may be software tutorials. Text is much better.
Not too cheap to avoid crowd and keep a high quality.
I pefer you emphasize white/grey hat techniques. I use grey hat only to help intitial launches for new sites
I favor short reviews
.-= Edgar´s last blog ..We are taking part in the Super Affiliate Challenge =-.
Hi Dan, I think a paid forum would be a great idea. It would weed out people that are just posting affiliate links and some of the bad SEO advice like you mentioned.
Like the new theme as well
.-= Dan´s last blog ..How To Choose From The Many Different Types Of Material Conveyor =-.
Thanks for the feedback Dan. IMHO, not getting Bad SEO advice is worth price of any membership, no matter the fee…hope people realize that…
I see too many people getting threads accepted at forums and all they’re doing is posting PLR from a year or two ago, and people are THANKING Them for it!!! Drives me nuts. It’s quite humiliating when you learn enough about SEO to realize that you were grateful for something that turned out to be bad advice.
Hi Daniel,
I appreciate your reviews and all those suggestions and comments you just made would make the site better. But if you would allow me an honest opinion, one thing that makes your site less credible is your constant pushing of Unique Article Wizard.
I have over 20 sites, all on the 1st page of Google for their key terms, and I was using it extensively for a few months. In that time, sites that were on the 1st page just dropped. Every time I went to check to see the listing of sites where the article was published on, over 70% of them were links to non existent sites or posts. All the blogger blogs it says it posts to are probably more like 90% non existent.
You criticize things like AMA or MAN because of the sites your links get put on, yet there list of sites are similar if not better. After all, both programs depends on people submitting sites. Another thing, when UAW coupled with Brute Force SEO, that meant more “new” horrible sites where your links get put on. And just yesterday, UAW sent an email begging for people to add more sites. So how is there system and sites more advanced then any other article service?
So that is where it doesn’t seem like it is an ubiased review, because I am positive if you did truly say how bad their service got, you would lose several thousands in monthly commissions.
Plain and simple you lose credibility how you constantly push UAW.
Ernesto, thanks for the feedback. I will always constantly “push” whatever I think is worthy of pushing. If you see a lot of affiliate links it’s really just a plugin I am using that hyperlinks that word every time I use it.
#2- About UAW’s effectiveness, you should read this post here http://linkvanareviews.com/is-unique-article-wizard-still-effective since it addresses some of your concerns.
#3- Regarding losing commissions, what difference does it make which service makes commissions? Whatever works best gets touted as the best, and gets sold the most, plain and simple….
One thing I will take from this is to get a better hyper linking cross/interlinking plugin, as I’ve never really liked this one, too many hyperlinks when a word is used, seems “pushy”…
I think an SEO forum whose main purpose is to share SEO ‘case studies’ would be extremely unique and valuable. There should be a standard formatting of case studies that state as many of the factors involved and which service or technique was used. I know that there is potential for misinformation, but it’s so valuable when lots of people confirm one particular technique or service works.
Possible solutions
1) Moderate who you allow to post case studies and who can’t.
- Pro’s : This ensures to a greater degree that case studies really are helpful and valuable.
- Cons : Its harder for lots of people to get involved in sharing their personal experiences this way because they will need your approval first. Essentially it will be a few people starting threads and others commenting which is pretty much exactly like a blog, so why start a forum at all in that case.
2) There’s no point in starting a forum if lots of people can’t start their own case studies without approval (like I said you may as well just invite guest writers to your blog in that case, which you have already). So instead, why not allow people to post their case studies without approval, but every thread should have a clear disclaimer at the top of it saying that the experiences and results described may be inaccurate and even falsified. That way a lot of people can contribute and readers will be well informed and aware of misinformation.
You could perhaps have 2 sub forums, one for unverified case studies and one for trusted members who you’ve spent time getting to know via skype.
Anyone whose is obviously plugging a service or makes dubious comments you can identify easily and ban or limit what they post.
NOW TO ADDRESS WHERE REVENUE WOULD COME FROM
I’ve never personally paid for a paid section, so if I were to assume others where like me (perhaps an incorrect assumption), I’d be dubious to expect any revenue. I have never been tempted by sub forums that claim to offer ‘secret techniques, scripts or videos’ like warrior forums or SEOblackhats forum because I believe I’m intelligent enough to find these things out for myself.
However I have been tempted by warriorforums’ “pay to advertise” scheme when you want to launch a new product and I have been tempted by digitalpoints pro membership which means my ‘sell’ threads stay near the top of the board for longer. But if I were to be tempted by something similar at your forum it would depend largely on how big an active your forum gets.
My personal conclusion
A free forum as I described in ‘solution 2′ would be a good addon to this blog just because of the valuable information people might share. It would also get lots of indexed pages in google and could be used to attract more readers to your blog, it may also help with retaining readership as readers will have more reason to come back. Whether its worth your time in money terms, you’ll never know unless you try!
Another possible revenue scheme
You might try to copy one of SEOblackhat’s tactics. I know for a while every year / half year he would organise events where 30 or so people would meet for a weekend. He would organise lots of fun activities, including going to the bar on the evening. He’d include a presentation to show how he got his rankings in lots of detail. I think he charged about $1000 and $2000 per head, he said he put the price that high because he wanted to attract people who’d already made money in the business and the event was as much about making deals amongst the ‘best’ as having a good time and sharing techniques.
Not sure if this is your style but is potentially a money spinner?
Anon, these are all good points most of which will be implemented if we go through with this.
Thanks,
Dan
Hello Dan
Im a newbie and still writing some ebooks which will be ready soon . I have been studying all the marketing so called Gurus and find that as in commercial life they are mainly shonks. I am following your work and will convert to a paying customer as soon as I can understand enough to actually publish my work. My computer skills are quite low and this is holding me back as I cant understand even much of what you advise although I can see that your products are genuine. Keep up with your present attitude for those of us who are still honest and headed your way. Thanks.
Doug
Hi, a paid forum or membership site would be great. It’s hard nowadays to get valuable information without going through a whole heap of crap.
A forum or membership site is always hard to start, but once momentum takes over, the rest is history.
Hope I helped a bit.
Jason
Dan,
As a relative newbie, there are 2 general challenges: 1. getting up to speed on “internet/online” marketing, 2. the technical aspects of the business (which is for me an even greater weakness)
The top concern is the delay in monetizing the websites and generating some money to offset costs spent on the business, while gaining enough knowledge, information, and more particularly, the know-how (how to do/implement things) in setting up the entire system to function effectively.
BTW, I recently joined CCP (one of the best and promising internet marketing business, according to my research). Given all the tools, information, webinars, training CCP provides, I hope the time on the learning curve can be shortened considerably; otherwise I will become one of the 90% statistic.
So, I can’t really tell you much about all these backlinks, seo, directories, webdesigning, various other technical stuff. I tend to outsource such things to expedite getting to the point where I can focus on one thing only: driving qualified traffic and start building a list. Still, new members will need to be assisted and counsel to some extent even under CCP program. Mentoring means that I will need to gain a lot more knowledge and fast, in order to be of help to newcomers. I don’t want them to also get discourage and fail. The attrition rate in online marketing is very high, much higher than law school, higher than ranger training.
Sorry but I have no suggestions at this time.
Glenn
Glenn, the feedback is good enough thanks, helps to realize that not every knows a fair amount about SEO (yet).
TIP: Since you said tech details get you flustered and yet you also state you outsource things, it’s pretty obvious (to me) that you should outsource the tech stuff, too.
Thanks,
Dan
Hi Daniel,
I recently discovered your blog whilst seeking reviews of Linkvana, and I am impressed with the non hype, honest and indepth reviews.
I rarely make blog posts, but I feel compelled on this occasion to do so because I feel obliged to express my appreciation since taking on board and benefiting from you recommendations and advice.
On another note Daniel, I am exited to see you’re looking to expand. I think a paid forum seems like a great idea, I’d subscribe in an instant.
All in all, keep up the great work. I’ll keep referring to your blog for all new posts.
Cheers Dal
Paid forum? Could be a good idea.
Suggestions:
1. Learn from/copy from the best. Best I know of is 1kaday
From my files:
cbengine:
Vendor ID earn1kaday
Commission 50% recurring commissions (Recurring)
You Earn pro edition
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%/sale 50%
%/refd 100%
Gravity 1.97 -0.26
Total $/sale $256.51 (Total Earnings Per Sale)
Future $ $238.54 (Total Rebill Amount)
First Seen Nov 30, 2008
CB:
Earn1KaDay Membership Site – Recurring Billing, High Retention.
Our Members Learn How To Earn. Featuring 11 Different Internet Marketing Business Models, This Is The Place To Be If You Are Searching For Success Strategies, Or Have A List Targeted To Those Wanting To Increase Their Online Earnings.
Avg $/sale $17.96
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[Note the "stickiness". Average signup stays for 11.4 months! As you know, most membership sites average 3-4 months...]
1A. 1kaday buys MMR’s and PLR’s for loads of good tools/products, makes them available to members as part of their membership. (New members can choose and download more than their 1st month’s dues in good stuff, right away!) Then keeps delivering with webinars, contests, updates, analyses and good info. These are good tactics.
2. Set up several different groupings of subjects, such as SEO, Copywriting, List-building, etc. Watch the postings, pick out an active senior who has his head screwed on right, and make him or her “Associate Moderator” or some such title, giving them the power to delete spam, offensive comments, etc. That will save you a lot of time, make things move along faster and smoother. (Kind of like a dojo puts black belt students in charge of routine teaching, to take that load off of the sensei.)
3. Add value by negotiating special deals with product vendors to give members a lower rate. (Helps members see the value they are getting each month, because the discounts can be counted in dollars saved…)
4. Consider two levels of membership: Beginner and Intermediate (or Pro) Make the first one inexpensive and cover basic stuffs. Give them access to only the level 1 forum sections. Make the second level more costly with more heavy-duty and analytical material. Put your in-depth and quality reviews here, where they will be more needed and better understood.
Best of luck Old Buddy,
Jorge
.-= Jorge Chavez´s last blog ..1WayLinks Video =-.
Jorge, gracias amigo!
How would you rate 1kaday versus Warriorforum?
Re. MRR and PLR, that’s good for on site content and for people who want to sell ebooks, not sure if there’s any valuable MRR or PLR around for SEO stuff, which is ever-changing in some respects, so rehashed and regurgitated MRR might not be a good thing to do here, not sure wha tkind of crowd will get drawn in to this type of thing (paid SEO forum).
In my opinion, the less a site/service/forum tries to do, the better it does at that one thing, so it wouldn’t be a how to make money forum primarily but for of a discussion entity with the aforementioned (in comments) case studies and what-not. I think I’ll probably move forward with this.
Continuity of value to members and time investment are my major concerns here really.
Thanks again buddy, hope all is well,
Dan
If I got a free membership I would read it, but why would people join your forum just to teach noobs about SEO?
IF you have to ask….
I am honest, i would never pay for a forum or for a whatever site for that matter. For any “paid” forum are 10 which are free. Sorry, too much greed. You already have your afflinks all over your site (which is good, we all do it on our sites
and now you want a paid forum?
(Dont get me wrong, you have a good site and i always read carefully what your write here and also on warrior forum!)
G.
.-= article marketing´s last blog ..One Way Link Building – ArticleRanks and SeoLinkvine for High Google Rankings =-.
OK, good points here, and I’m the same way, would never think of paying for a forum when there are good SEO blogs dishing out the real deal on things SEO-related.
Therefore forum would have to be quite different and unique and provide value worth charging a fee for, which is really the end game here, and what’s making me cautious from even starting such a thing.
So what would provide enough value for you, an experienced SEO-er, to warrant joining a paid forum?
Question #2- Is there a better way to call attention to some affiliate links aside from hyperlinked the words automatically every time they’re used in a sentence, post etc…?
Okay, my opinion for what it’s worth. Start your own SEO company and blog only when you feel like it.
Been thinking about that David, but you know how it is dealing with clients, when rankings go up or down they freak out, and its a JOB for me one way or another, and I’m not looking for a job, no matter what the pay might be. The forum idea has some merits to it, but that’s looking like it might turn out to be a job, too if I am going to make it into something worth paying for.
A forum really isn’t all that much work at all. My wife has one complete with live chat (I ranked it number one for her lol ) and she hardly ever has to do anything with it. If you have good moderators then it really shouldn’t take all that much of your time. Maybe if you start with a free forum and work into paid sections after it grows?
I actually do not participate a lot on this blog, but i do read most the posts, or at least the ones i ‘want to read’ …as you mentioned, me and others should be more open minded and read what can sound initially ‘not so interesting’… I found out on that note that i gained much more reading what, at my first sight, didnt looked so interesting..then the posts i actually came here to read about…
Dan… You do a pretty good job mate, and your opinions are trully valuable. despite the fact that i bought a few ‘reccomended’ products from this affiliate links, you do for sure deserve all the commissions you take on this…
keep your purple cow mentality up…cause that is the way to go.
PS. You should create a PRO paid section on this blog tbh… i do come here more often now then to warrior forum, which to be honest i have paid and get sick everyday with all the wso and constant daily crap going on…
Joe, thanks for the feedback buddy.
I’m going to go ahead with the forum but won’t be devoting much time towards a paid section. All this testing and reviewing takes up a lot of my time and resources so when the forum does get put together, it’ll just be a B.S. free zone with one time fee to join (maybe) to keep spammers and idiots out.
I DO have other sites besides this one that I want to devote time towards
so I figured I could spearhead the creation/ development of an SEO forum/community where people can expound upon what this blog you’re on now does (B.S. free reviews and seo tips).
Regarding the WSO and what-not we gotta realize that the more we learn about SEO the less there is to be gleaned from hype-ish sales letters and WSOs geared towards the SEO newbies market, so we gotta keep things in perspective here and not get too pissed off by crap content, which to others might be gold considering where they’re currently at right with their SEO knowledge base.
So for tame SEO knowledge people can go there until they’re up to speed on things, then maybe read my blog or better yet the following two blogs that are a bit more advanced than mine
http://www.bluehatseo.com/
http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com
Thanks again for the feedback and your honest reviews!
Dan
I could reccommend a search box in the site ( lol
) , i just bought the indexing tool trough your affiliate link and can’t get it working or neither get any support answer for 4 days now…i was wondering if you have some personal quick pdf on suggestions… wht scares me is that it seems so easy to implement that even my dog wouldn’t fail…but i did1!! so i donno if there is something wrong. I also got BLS from your backdoor few months ago and i recently read somewhere in this blog that you have a pdf on how to ‘use it ‘ properly’ …would be great if you can send to me… many thanks
José
I didn’t get to read too many suggestions, however the mere fact that you get so many suggestions and you got me to stay on your site; I did grab an idea or two, in my opinion, you’re probably on the right track.
Go the email from you – thank you…I need to read it over a little more closely, but at first glance, I think it is one of those rare “savers” which go in my SEO inbox folder. Thanks for the hard work, it is people like yourself who have helped me grow and begin businesses…if people like these did not take the time out to give out advice (of course you do have to be smart enough to seek it), i wouldn’t be where i am.
I’m sorry, in the last post I wanted to put something in about my company. I ran a sales recruiting firm and marketing recruitment agency out of New York City and just opened up another online business; we’ll see how that goes.
executive sales recruiters marketing recruitment agency nyc