Shortie

I have used both Fiverr and SEOClerk in the past to sell my services but have found that I have made more selling on promotion forums selling my services than I ever did on places such as Fiverr and SEOClerk. I have turned to just offering my services on forums now and have been able to get frequent customers which is great!

I have had a lot of success selling my services on promotion forums and even gained some clients who I now have recurring work with which means I now am guaranteed a certain amount each month without fail. I was using SEOClerk but they changed so much that now, I have to wait 10 days for it to clear before I have access to my money which is a pain. As of now, I much prefer to offer services on promotion forums to avoid fees and waiting times.

I don't believe there is any length of time that you should be looking at or aiming for to start making money on your site as it can vary for several reasons such as how much content you get out there, what the niche of your website is. If you are looking to make money from your website, you should be focusing on how to ensure that will happen rather than setting a date expectation to start earning.

I am not running any forums or blogs as a business. I do have two forums that are monetized with Google Adsense which do make a little but that is purely to help with the costs of running the forums which does help. I would at some point love to own a blog that I could earn enough as a business but for now, still working on ideas and ways I could fit it all in to succeed in that.

Domain flipping is something I have looked into in the past and I do know of sites that are recommended to flip domains but I have not had any luck flipping any domains so far. It is my understanding that it's best to try and grab domains that could be popular as soon as you can to be sure that when you wish to sell, they stand a good chance of selling and you making a profit.

I have not had to deal with a marketplace dispute on any of my forums but I have heard from people who have needed to deal with marketplace disputes due to either non-payers or people who take payment and fail to deliver the work. Something I have learned from others who have dealt with this is how careful you have to be to be sure you understand the whole dispute before making any decisions.

I have in the past taken part in some surveys to earn a little extra money, SwagBucks is one I have used in the past that I feel is good and worth the time if you have a few minutes a day to dedicate to completing a few surveys.

One of my favourite means to get paid as a freelancer is via PayPal, this is because it is reliable and I guess the only gripe I have with PayPal is the fees can be quite high. I have recently started accepting cryptocurrency as well which has helped me gain more clients who prefer to pay using crypto.

So far I have not used real currency to hire anyone to post on any of my sites, I have always used posting services or post exchanges to get content on most of my forums which has worked well. As a freelance writer myself, I would love to be able to hire freelancers to post on my sites and help them with their journey as a freelancer, one day I do hope to do that.

I have been making use of social media to some extent for my websites but I can't help but feel I need to spend more time building up my social media pages for me to start seeing success. At the moment I have been working on Facebook and Twitter for marketing purposes.

Promotion forums are great to promote your website but if that is all you stick to, you will find that activity will not pick up as much as you hope. Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter are all great places to be able to promote your website in which you can get some good results. It is always best to stay consistent with your promotion too for the results to start showing.

Knowing about and understanding keyword research is something I feel all webmasters should be aware of. All too often some webmasters create a website and expect the traffic to come flooding and then get discouraged because that does not happen. There is so much more to running a forum, just creating and opening a forum will not mean your forum blows up over night. I learned a lot about keyword research by reading up on it and also checking out YouTube videos too. YouTube is one of the ways I have found works really well for me when learning something new.

I don't have any volunteer staff members at the moment on either forum I own or co-own, we are managing the forums at the moment just the two of us. I have in the past had volunteer staff on other forums though and I found them to be active and contributed to help with the success of the forum.

This is a forum feature I love and I also like how you can have it enabled on some forums but can also disable it on forums you wouldn't like to be notified about. There have been many times that I have not checked a specific forum for a while for whatever reason but if I get a notification of a DM, I jump straight there to check it out. Some forums I know have been having issues with emails bouncing, specifically Gmail emails which can cause a problem for some webmasters.

As someone who has created and built up a general discussion forum in the past, they are easy to start up but not the easiest to get activity on, it can take a while and you can sometimes feel as though like giving up so you do need a plan and you do need to make sure you tell yourself that there are going to be roadblocks. The hardest forums I would say are gaming forums to create, open and build up.

I remember when I first started out creating forums and I was new to it all, I thought it was a great idea to lock the forum down to an extent to push people to register for the forum, how wrong was I! Slowly I learned that it is best to allow guests to have access to the content you have so that they can take a look and determine if the forum is something they are looking for, not only that, having guests able to see your content can help greatly with traffic as well.

I have quite a few niches that are my favourite. Gaming is for sure one of them, I am a huge gamer and have been since I was young and I love to talk all things gaming given the chance General Chat is another, I love to be able to talk about anything that interests me and having a forum that offers discussions on all kinds of subjects is perfect.

I have a blog but I will admit, I have not had the time to spend creating content for it recently so it is currently sat with information about my streaming and all the details for my socials and where to find my content. I have not yet been able to monetize my blog but I would love to get accepted by Google Adsense when I do find more time to be able to create content for the blog again.

One of the ways I like to monetize a forum is through user upgrades that I offer so that members have the option of being able to receive incentives for helping with the running of the forum and the costs. Google Adsense is another option I like to use for monetization purposes but I do feel that you have to tweak that a lot so that your forum is not taken over by ads.

I at the moment own and co-own a forum. The forum I own is a wrestling niche forum and I have been running that now since March 2024. The other forum that I co-own which is a gaming and content creation-related forum I have been running now with my other half since 2019. Revillution has been around since 2009 though when my other half first opened it up and started running.

For any blog I have ever started I have always used WordPress but have also looked into Blogger as well. I know that is free and can a lot be monetized with Google Adsense which is awesome. I do like how Blogger offers so much for a free option and have considered using that going forward for some blogs I have ideas for.

I at the moment run one forum myself and co-own another forum and I will admit, that it is not easy to keep up with everything. I couldn't run 5 forums like some people do as I feel at least 2 - 3 of them would end up neglected with the amount of time I have. I am sticking with the two I have at the moment and will work on those over time.

At the moment I own one niche forum and that is a wrestling forum I am working on building up at the moment. Niche forums are always the more difficult to get going I feel, especially when you have to target an audience who has an interest in that niche. I have in the past run a multiple niche forum, that was from 2009 - 2017 and it did really well but due to hosting costs increasing, I closed. Something I regret now but at the time I felt burned out and wanted to try something different.

I have experience in running both a blog and a forum but I will admit, given a choice between the two, I much prefer to run a forum as I feel I can do so much more and offer so much more within a forum than a blog.

When it comes to running an online community, it's not just about owning the community but it's being able to offer a place for people to come and discuss what matters to them without any issues, a place they feel safe sharing their opinions and discussing what matters most to them.