Who here actually runs long term content websites?

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Thanks BYA, I appreciate it!

I do this full time now. I don't involve myself in the forums any longer, I have an admin that does it. She runs the show there and does a great job. When you're combining business with community, it can blow up (and it did). Communities are people, and they don't want to feel like a customer. They don't want to feel like they are dollar signs. Running the forum was a huge time suck for me, and I couldn't do that and concentrate on making money. This arrangement works out well, I concentrate on the business end of it, and the forum runs itself.

My forum is a debate forum, mostly women so it was very very high maintenance. Depending on the type of forum you have, it may not be. I did have to learn vbulletin inside and out, and I do all the tech work for the forums. If you do decide to do one, just yell if you need any tech advice. Vbulletin is pretty cool.
 


I forgot to answer the monetizing question....

I didn't start really making an income until I started developing the content. Forums can be difficult to monetize. My CPM advertisers didn't want to be in the forums, because you can rip through 100 ads per user without the user clicking on anything. Users tune out ads on forums.

We did try CPA, but forums users tend to be there for community...not to be sold to. Forums are a great way to retain users, but as a source of income they are marginal at best. They require a lot of work, and when I put that time into the content part of the site, I quadruple my return.
 
Blastyourass said:
I have been wanting to do a forum for my one of my content sites and was wondering if this is your only source of income or a side job? Second how is it running a forum and is it monetizable (meaning worth the work)?

I noticed you do have activity there and your site is very polished and professional. My fiancee actually liked it (new parents) so that was cool.
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Two things for ya, Moe. This will save you a lot of heartache later. :)

1. Only add a forum if you know people are dying for one. You don't want to babysit and incubate it because, and BlondeTM says, the return for that work won't be worth it. If you didn't already have a content site, I would suggest only starting with a blog - with expert guest posters from the niche even - and once you start getting 20-30 comments per post, you have the starting of a seedling community. But since you already have a site, I would say that you are the best judge of the traffic and amount of interactivity with readers.

2. Keep the focus on your content site. Advertisers don't always feel good about forums. They know that forum users are far less likely to click on ads (or even notice them), but also many have concerns about their brand showing up next a post about somebody hating their brand. One thing we are working on changing on our site is taking forum content out of the forum to create more static pages (well really, they will just *look* more static). (If you didn't already have a content site, I would have said to only have the forum as an aside - not as the main focus.)

You CAN monetize forums, but you will work harder for that money. Is your content site product or brand-based? That will help you tremendously!

Hope that helps,

Laura
 
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Im moving more and more towards the big content authority site model using LSI principles.
I want long term stability.. I still run mini sites and experiments here and there but big content sites (2 or 3) are my long term goal.
 
Long term.. oh yeah!

My most popular site passed 10mil hits since it's creation in 2004 and I've never looked back. Got about 60 sites now and normally create a new one each week.

I call them little gum ball machines that you don't have to refill :D
 
Sorry, I don't understand. What advantages do you get from 'using' LSI in a site?
 
Thanks so much Blonde. I really appreciate your posts and help that you give here and to everyone. I take it all in and it helps so much in my determing what I will do.

You and Laura have solid advice and experience in this realm so I take very word and hold on to it!

BlondeTM said:
I forgot to answer the monetizing question....

I didn't start really making an income until I started developing the content. Forums can be difficult to monetize. My CPM advertisers didn't want to be in the forums, because you can rip through 100 ads per user without the user clicking on anything. Users tune out ads on forums.

We did try CPA, but forums users tend to be there for community...not to be sold to. Forums are a great way to retain users, but as a source of income they are marginal at best. They require a lot of work, and when I put that time into the content part of the site, I quadruple my return.
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Thanks soooooo much Laura for taking the time her to help!

My site is a content site, branding a service and name in a niche industry. I think the blog idea is great to form as a catilyst for a forum for maybe later.
But peope are dying for one because they need help desparately but there is no one helpig them. Just taking and abusing their needs by gouging them and screwing them.

I was hoping to have an honest no BS forum to help them and in turn gain business from that help. We are talking one sale can be $3,000-$5,000 to me, so this is a whole different animal then the typical forum or advertsing. I would be the backer and advertiser. And the time I put in would be rewarding if they turn into sales. Its not like I'm hoping to make $1 a click.

Now that you see what I'm doing and the potential ROI what advice can you ladies give me on that?

Everything helps Laura. What you and Blonde are telling me, I shoulds pay a consultation fee for but shit thats whay were here to help:D



Laura said:
Two things for ya, Moe. This will save you a lot of heartache later. :)

1. Only add a forum if you know people are dying for one. You don't want to babysit and incubate it because, and BlondeTM says, the return for that work won't be worth it. If you didn't already have a content site, I would suggest only starting with a blog - with expert guest posters from the niche even - and once you start getting 20-30 comments per post, you have the starting of a seedling community. But since you already have a site, I would say that you are the best judge of the traffic and amount of interactivity with readers.

2. Keep the focus on your content site. Advertisers don't always feel good about forums. They know that forum users are far less likely to click on ads (or even notice them), but also many have concerns about their brand showing up next a post about somebody hating their brand. One thing we are working on changing on our site is taking forum content out of the forum to create more static pages (well really, they will just *look* more static). (If you didn't already have a content site, I would have said to only have the forum as an aside - not as the main focus.)

You CAN monetize forums, but you will work harder for that money. Is your content site product or brand-based? That will help you tremendously!

Hope that helps,

Laura
Click to expand...
 
Wow, this thread is actually pretty surprising (and very informative). I was under the impression that most people on WickedFire were doing short term affiliate marketing stuff with PPC, or at the very most, building tons of mini sites for the purpose of gaining niche SE traffic.

I'm not taking anything away from that, but there is no doubt that large content sites, especially ones with an active community, are more secure than say a bunch of spam sites.

But here's a question. In terms of building a secure long term income, do you guys (or girls in this thread) recommend focusing on 1-3 large, solid, content sites as opposed to a bunch of niche mini sites?

I guess it all goes back to the "don't put all your eggs in one basket rule." I just wish I had more time, because I want to try everything - arbitrage, PPC AM, niche sites, and large content sites. But I can't do it all. I need to balance my schedule, and while going to school, that is pretty difficult to do.

What advice can you offer on prioritizing your projects? Right now I've got some off the wall ideas I'm going to try, I'm working on a content site, and really want to try PPC affiliate marketing. But I would like to make some niche mini sites too!

How should I prioritize something like that?
 
comatose said:
Using is not the best word.

Go and do some research.
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Thanks for the advice.

I have done research into LSI and that is why I can't see how it is used in this context. As you seem to know something about it, could you or anyone else who believes LSI can help with SEO or content development, just briefly list the benefits they think LSI brings?
 
This isnt a thread about LSI and SEO.
By building sites and writing articles with LSI theory and principles in mind you're sites are going to come off as more authority than those who are using the traditional keyword-targeted article model.
If you researched then you'd know the benefits so obviously you havent researched enough.
 
By building sites and writing articles with LSI theory and principles in mind you're sites are going to come off as more authority than those who are using the traditional keyword-targeted article model.
If you researched then you'd know the benefits so obviously you havent researched enough.
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Yes, maybe I need to do more research.

The reason I asked the question is because I've come across numerous SEO gurus and websites proclaiming the benefits of LSI and promising to be able to use "LSI theory and principles" to create supposedly LSI-friendly websites. However, I doubt half these self-styled gurus touting the Next Big Thing in SEO have ever performed even the most basic of Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) calculations that is a prerequisite to LSI.

The reason this seems like snake oil to me is because a search engine is represented, in LSI terms, by a term-document matrix of many billions of documents. The LSI scores are therfore a function of the co-occurance of terms/keywords in this global corpus. Therefore, the only way in which a person could possibly attain the sort of influence some of these SEO gurus and companies promise would be if they were somehow able to alter the scores of all the other documents in the matrix (unlikely).

I could, of course, be wrong in my understanding of LSI.

Anyway, as you said, this thread isn't about LSI so I'll leave it there :)
 
Actually most of the "gurus" dont mention LSI and most likely have no idea what it is.
It's the quiet guys who are using this to rake it in and will continue to do so in future. If you choose to ignore it, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
 
chatmasta said:
But here's a question. In terms of building a secure long term income, do you guys (or girls in this thread) recommend focusing on 1-3 large, solid, content sites as opposed to a bunch of niche mini sites?

I guess it all goes back to the "don't put all your eggs in one basket rule." I just wish I had more time, because I want to try everything - arbitrage, PPC AM, niche sites, and large content sites. But I can't do it all. I need to balance my schedule, and while going to school, that is pretty difficult to do.
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I started writing a long detailed answer to this and felt it deserved a new thread all together. Click here and give it a read.
 
Holy crap this post is still going strong, I guess I'll have to put in what I feel about creating my own sites.

I figure why only create a site for a short term, even if its only purpose is to make an affiliate sale I put in the work to get that site ranked for certain keywords for organic traffic, then I put in the work to set up the campaigns and then I put in the work doing offsite SEO and all the other crap involved with building a site.

So here is how I work it, once I build my site, make my sales and get my traffic, eventually the offer I'm promoting will expire, however there are tons of other closely related offers that will do good on that site, all I need to do is change the banners and links to that new offer and the site can continue to make me money for years to come.

Toss up a new article each week or so, stagger them so its not that much of a hassle to continually post and you'll be laughing.
 
chatmasta said:
Wow, this thread is actually pretty surprising (and very informative). I was under the impression that most people on WickedFire were doing short term affiliate marketing stuff with PPC, or at the very most, building tons of mini sites for the purpose of gaining niche SE traffic.

I'm not taking anything away from that, but there is no doubt that large content sites, especially ones with an active community, are more secure than say a bunch of spam sites.

But here's a question. In terms of building a secure long term income, do you guys (or girls in this thread) recommend focusing on 1-3 large, solid, content sites as opposed to a bunch of niche mini sites?

I guess it all goes back to the "don't put all your eggs in one basket rule." I just wish I had more time, because I want to try everything - arbitrage, PPC AM, niche sites, and large content sites. But I can't do it all. I need to balance my schedule, and while going to school, that is pretty difficult to do.

What advice can you offer on prioritizing your projects? Right now I've got some off the wall ideas I'm going to try, I'm working on a content site, and really want to try PPC affiliate marketing. But I would like to make some niche mini sites too!

How should I prioritize something like that?
Click to expand...

I only have one content site, it's almost more than I can handle sometimes. It depends on what you put into it. All of my content is original and I'm anal about design. I'm in a very competitive market so if I try to serve up second rate content I won't hold on to users.

It has it's rewards and it's drawbacks. The great thing is that my niche (women's interests) allows me to niche out within the site itself. I put a page up less than a week ago and it's on the first page of google for it's keyword already. The bad thing is, that keeps me putting all my eggs in one basket.

Half the battle of indexing and linking is already done, and to start over again seems incredibly daunting. I am trying to go with a couple of niche mini sites for cash flow but I may be able to accomplish that somewhat within my content site. There are only so many hours in a day though, and content sites require regular updating.

I don't think there is really one great way of doing this. Probaby more than half the people here doing affiliate sites are making more than I am. While long term secure income is great so is paying the bills. I think that's where diversifying comes in and what I'm heading towards.
 
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