Earning Money

I got a question once from a friend and he was asking me whether he should keep his blog about making money online or if he should turn it into a forum, specifically a webmaster forum. Now, we all know that I am a blogger and I am more passionate about blogging than being a forum webmaster, but, I wondered if creating a webmaster forum was really the best thing that he could do. I wanted to talk about creating a webmaster forum and what comes with creating one now, but before I do, here is one that you can use as a reference and what I think is a good one. My friend’s webmaster forum.

One of the things that I look for when I am looking to join a webmaster forum is if it has an active buy and sell forum. That is the one thing my friend’s site is lacking, but I don’t mind. I think that a webmaster forum really needs to have a good buy and sell forum because it ensures that there are people on the site. However, on top of that, it needs to have the right topics. I think a topic on the top three search engines is important and I think that topics on link building, marketing, and all of that is necessary. But, above all, what is necessary is some form of individuality. You need to stand out amongst the crowd and that is the hardest part about creating a webmaster forum.

There are a ton of webmaster forums out there that are really big. They have active buy/sell forums. They have active all forums. And the problem with creating a new one is that you are dependent on other people coming to post on your site. Why would they if they are already posting on one that can offer them more? That is where the tricky part comes in. You can do what my friend did and offer a contest, but that only works long enough for the contest to run out and then, unless the site is really active, it will die down as well. So, you have to figure out a way to really make your site unique so that people are interested in coming back to it time and time again.

Do I think that my friend should have converted his blog into a forum? No. The reason behind this is starting a forum requires about five times the amount of work as it requires to run a blog. On a blog, you are posting alone and it is very easy to get someone to read your content. Getting someone to POST is the hard part and the part that most people don’t realize. People don’t mind reading, but people will mind posting unless there is a real reason to post and that is why I always love blogging over forums. However, there are benefits to running a forum that I have said before in the past.

Overall, unless you have something amazing to offer to people, creating a webmaster forum is damn hard unless you have some amazing passion. I have seen forums die really fast and I have seen them take forever to grow. Can it happen? Yes. However, you really need a lot of dedication. Starting a make money online blog? That’s tough. But, anyone can do it if you have any idea about the niche. Starting a webmaster forum? That requires a lot of knowledge about being a webmaster and something unique. Or, you just need a lot of friends to constantly post threads and make the site big that way. Best of luck regardless.

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