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Today i will start a series of posts about creating a forum. This is probably one of the long waited posts some bloggervenue readers wanted to see here.

I have more than 4 years of experience on creating and managing forums. During these years i have made many mistakes, i have learned many things almost by myself with trial and error. So im very comfortable with this subject and i hope to be able to share in an easy way, what i have learned in these four years.

First, let me clarify that the “Creating a forum” series will be only for standalone forums.

Standalone forums is an expression i use to define forums that are not integrated inside a website, that uses for example a CMS (content management system) like e107, joomla or mambo.

The model, that will serve as an example will be an established forum (dahh.net), which is a portuguese community, so you would probably want to see the translated version.

Now that the introduction has been done is time to focus on what do we want to use?

First, you need hosting, obviously, and secondly, you need a software compatible with hosting. So, to keep things simple, we will narrow our options to hosting with php capabilities and mysql driven database. Luckily, the best forums software out there use php and mysql (like 90% of the rest of the sites :p)

Things you need to know about hosting:

If you have hosting that meets the requirements mentioned above then you almost don’t need to read this.

If you don’t have, then i would recommend you to get a hosting package with at least 100 mb space and 5gb of bandwidth. This is pretty basic but you don’t need much in the beginning. Off course, in mid to long run, a hosting package with lots of space and bandwidth in a powerful server is advisable. I remember i started dahh.net in a 35mb hosting with 3gb of bandwidth lol.

I could recommend you a bunch of  hosting deals, but im sticking with one, that is by far recognized as one of the best if not the best hosting company at the moment: Hostgator.

Ironically, i don’t use them, because i have a contract with a portuguese company and im very happy with it so far

Choosing the right forum software:

Choosing a software for me it is an easy decision. There are only 3 forum scripts that i accept to use, and only one of them is free.

1st option: Vbulletin - One of the most used forum scripts in the world. It costs $100 for 1 year license. This is a powerful script, fully developed and with a strong community supporting it. I have only used it as a forum member and never as a owner. The price it costs won’t tempt me to buy it, specially when there are better options (free)

2nd option: Invision power board -  This was my favourite, until version 2.0 came out. It went commercial, and now you need $149 to buy it! Despite that, this is a great software. One of the most stable around and more appealing with an excellent community that constantly develops new skins and mods to use. The last free version released was 1.3.1 final, and it can still be used as long you have it on your pc (or just ask for a friend that have it :p)

3rd option: Simple Machines - This is the script we are going to use. It is free and in my honest opinion is by far the best forum script around. Why? Here are a few reasons:

1. Free!
2. 5 stars active and developing community;
3. lots of modifications and themes to choose;
4. Package system, meaning you can upload modifications and used them with a simple click;
5. easy to use;
6. professional team of programmers: the software is being developed by a professional team that work for Simple Machines LLC

Now, that we have hosting and a forum software to use lets head on to:

Choosing a niche for the forum:

Dahh.net is a general forum and it doesn’t specialize in anything. I created it because i wanted an easy way to share with my friends all the fun stuff i received on my email, while discussing important topics of the world.

As any other site, i advise you to choose a topic that you like, or a topic that you feel confortable talking about. You can do some keyword research, but just remember that any topic you choose, it will require a lot of work on your part.

Unless, you have wonderful marketing capabilities, lots of money to spend in advertising and lots of friends, i would advise you to stay away from these niches:

- Tech Forums

- Warez

- Porn/Erotic forums

- General Forums

- Make Money Online Forums (obviously)

- Blogging forums

After you decided on the type of forum you want, you need to choose a domain name accordingly, preferably brandable. Take my forum example. I choose dahh because one of the strong points of the forum is the funny video and images categories.

I have just covered the first part, which is the very basic stuff need to establish a forum. I recommend you to subscribe my RSS feed to keep track of the following posts.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Usfreeads is a site that allows it’s members to get free classified ads, and has been around for 9 years now, and  i have seen tremendous buzz about it around the web since i started blogging, which was over a year now.

The buzz about usfreeads is how it will help a common user to make money placing classified ads. It seems that thousands of users are taking advantage of the supposed benevolent way google looks towards usfreeads pages. It seems, that a well written ad  will most likely to perform well on google search ranking. You can look around and you will see that many “praise the gods” and “worship” the service provided by them.

Well to me, all that is a bunch of crap even if it is true (don’t take me wrong :p). The only thing the reviews made me do is to try it out for myself. Check the results of my experiences (yes another experience) and see if a common guy, with no special skills like me can make something positive out of this. So about 3 months ago a registered for a free account to give it a try round.

Ok, the first obstacle i found was the free account. It totally sucked. You were only allowed to make 2 ads, with no html, images or links to the product you want to sell!!! Point being: They want you to buy a premium membership. So free ads my ass (pardon my french lol).

I even bother to try and write an ad with this circunstances. Total waste of time, it wouldn’t bring me nothing extraordinary and in the end it was rejected. So i left my account getting dust until i could get some time to experiment. So today i subscribed the premium membership with one week free trial. After that, it will be $9.99/month.There is also a gold membership for only $10/year but to say the truth, if you see what premium gives and what gold gives, you will choose premium.

Ok, the tools are set, and i just need to choose some products and write some ads. I think my experiment will last a month, probably more and the success or failure will depend on the amount of ads i write, the quality of them and off course on how good usfreeads perfoms on delivering targeted traffic.

So the experiment will involve two types of money making programs:

1- My newest Bans Store. One that i have put more time to develop and the first one that i can call a real store. The other one were just “experiments” lol;

2- Affiliate programs from several CPA ad networks.

Now, do you want to try for yourself? Then just join Usfreeads and get a premium membership and i invite you to share your experiense here. (yes is is an affiliate link, im weak lol)

IF you want to see where this goes then subscribe my rss feed to keep easier to track the evolution process.

Popularity: 17% [?]

TinyMassive is a new company, launched July 1st if im not mistaken. They are really new but they know what they are doing.

Tinymassive is a comparison shopping engine (CSE), similar to shoppingads and widgetbucks. It will show ads from several merchants, relevant  to your site in several typical ad formats.It will display a list with products from different merchants, and it allow you to compare prizes between them. Nothing new if you are used to shoppingads or widgetbucks.

You can sign as publisher and make money displaying their ads. You earn on a per click basis, up to 70% of the value paid to tinymassive.  So far i can’t tell how the cpc is, as i have no data to share.

What’s worth to mention is that they claim that a publisher can earn up to $6 CPM! This is really good compared to similar companies, but sadly,im sure this CPM rate is not for all users…

As usual in these kind of sites, they tend to value American and canadian traffic, although the PPC ad sare open to other countries so far.

Ok, but do the ads look good?

well, you be the judge:

In my opinion, the widget style is clean, simple, light and very web 2.0. You can rate the product, compare prices between merchants, and a very important aspect is the ability to read comments about the products displayed. I really enjoyed how the widget looks like.

This is a new company and this is the time to sign up and get some referrals. They pay you 10% of what your referrals make.

Go ahead and give Tinymassive a try.

Oh, btw. A peculiarity about the company is that it is owned by a group of women. And they all have experience in this area.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Yesterday i visited a site that shocked me a bit for a few seconds, but then i remember i have already seen more crazy ideas than this one. All of them lead to the wealth of the seller…

Ian Usher is simply selling his entire life! Ian says he had enough of his life and he doesn’t want it anymore!

This guy had a great life, but due to certain circumstances (his wife broke his heart) he decided to sell his house, his belongings, his friends and job! on Ebay!!!

This seem a bit drastic and crazy, but, oK, i agree with him. LIving in a house that was built to live a life with our love, and see that love go away would be most unbearable to keep living there…

This auction is gathering a lot of attention, and believe it or not there are currently 37 bids, with the top bid reaching the AU $315,100. The auction will last 4 days more, but im sure that this value can double, making Ian an original millionaire!

This is a case where a crazy idea could bring unexpected wealth, even if you tell it to your friends and they laugh until they cant breath. The most difficult part is to put it in practice, if we don’t try it, how will we know it doesn’t work?

Read more about ian or check is auction page.

Off Topic: IM very tired these days… The work is acumulating on the health center. I never stop, lots of treatments to do for the patients, and then when i arrive at home i have to work on photoshop…. im on zombie mode….

Popularity: 22% [?]

Well, entrecard has been quiet since their change on how much advertising cost on a certain blog is calculated. Which in my opinion is not the best for entrecard. But today i received an email with some updates.

The new added option, and a long waited option, is the ability to add more than one blog to your account. It was kind of stupid not being able to add more blogs to our account. And as a bonus, adding at least one more blog to your account you will be automatically entered on a 15000 entrecard credits contest.

Entrecard has also released the Entrecard official ebook. Download it and see some strategies that can help you bring the maximum of entrecard.

They also have a new homepage.  It automatically  posts links from your posts every time you update your blog, and lets you see what others bloggers have been writing on their respective blogs.

Btw, if you write a post regarding the official book(with a link to it) and mention the “add new blog” feature, you will win 2000 EC. You just need to write a comment here and provide a link to your post for they to confirm.

Popularity: 9% [?]