Got Real Problem - Please Help

[hamonpari]

Dear Readers,

After spending 120 pound strelling + 130USD for hosting, I am getting no traffic, Technology Community - Technology Forums - Technology Blogs - Powered by vBulletin and ReviewsClick.Com - Reviews By Customers For Customers - Powered by vBulletin. no one is joining these forums, Please advice, Should I go with Google Adwords for promotions, OR Wait . Sincere guidelines and help will be highly appreciated. Tell me What Makes a forum a hit forum as I am really inspired by WebProWorld Forums.

[speed]

There's as good as no posts in either forum, why would anyone want to post in an inactive forum?

You have to work to make a forum work, you need to generate posts which are informative and invite discussion only then will people slowly join in and make their own posts.

Get your friends, family and colleagues to post and discuss information with you, bribe people, talk to yourself if you have to, but really do anything to make it at least appear active.

Then obviously you need to announce your presence to the rest of the world i.e. market the site. Personally I generally find forums through word of mouth from friends who are already members and are telling me the forum has good discussions etc.

[hamonpari]

Thanks, Speed for nice reply my question remained same adwords will work or not.

[speed]

I don't see why AdWords won't get people to the forums, the easy option is to spend a few dollars and test the water.

[hamonpari]

Thanks again, Speed

I am ready to test water. In your previous reply you have mentioned about youself about paying users to write in forum, how this can achieved, would it be better idea to make forum popular.... and the legal one... In my views its not a personally good idea.... I means ethics sort of thing. Can you help me to run a compaign to make reviewsclick.com a hit forum. ? Will wait for your reply.

[speed]

I said bribe users not pay for posts, one way of doing that is to offer revenue share using AdSense. For each thread they starts there is a equal chance that their adsense or yours will show for each view of the thread. There's mods for this at vbulletin.org.

The downside of course is they might start creating lots of useless threads, so you'll have to clean up/control it.

Or you could have a monthly prize of the most useful thread/post/whatever.

I'm afraid I don't do marketing I leave that to others who specialise in it.

[hamonpari]

Good Info, Thanks Again Speed,

First, Do you please tell me that to whom you left the markeeting job and how this circle goes,

Second, I am intrested to know. Also I am intrested to start a reseller business. Any dimensions or point where to start hosting reseller business.

[speed]

I've sent you a PM.

One thing you might want to do is have custom skins made for the forums, you might already be planning this I don't know, as it makes them stand out from the crowd.

As for the reseller business I'm slightly uncertain if you want to sell reseller accounts to say web designers or want to use a reseller account to sell hosting to individuals and businesses?

Assuming you want to sell reseller accounts to web designers and the like, you are going to need to purchase/lease dedicated servers. You will then have to manage the server yourself.

Management includes monitoring the server, securing the server, backups (daily offsite with a proper rotation none of this backing up within the same machine rubbish that some hosts do), software upgrades and of course creating the reseller accounts.

If you're not experienced with your chosen operating system, Linux or Windows, and I don't just mean having the ability to install it then really don't bother with this as for business sites you are playing with peoples livelihoods.

If you just want to sell hosting then you need to locate a provider of a suitable reseller account. You need to ensure they are providing backups and other services in a manner which is suitable for the product you wish to offer.

This removes the need for you to be able to manage the server so depending on your skills this may be the best option.

In both cases:

• Your service is only as good as your weakest supplier.
• Decide on server location, some don't care where their sites are hosted while others wish their UK sites to be in the UK and their US sites in the US and so on. So you need to decide on your market and what you want to target, or maybe like us you will have servers in both countries.
• Work out sensible hosting plans, none of this unlimited rubbish, nothing is unlimited and bandwidth/resources have to be paid for somehow. Not to mention backups take space and bandwidth so must be factored in.
• In my opinion you need help desk software for your users to contact you, this of course must not be hosted on the same server as your clients or when the server is down they can't contact you. While emails do work there's no history like you have with tickets.
• Again I'd say you need billing software, something like Clientexec can integrate with cPanel to auto create accounts. If you are going for a small niche with few clients then you can do it manually.
• Be prepared to work for your clients, there are so many hosts popping up offering insanely large amounts of disk and bandwidth for next to nothing that clients are sometimes swayed by them, that is until it all goes wrong e.g. the server crashes and they find the backups were actually on the same server and are also corrupted. You need to set yourself apart from them unless you choose to compete with them, it's really down to which market you choose to enter.
• A website that looks reasonable and has all pertinent information on it including contact information, again best not to have it on the same server as your clients.

I'm sure there's a lot more that should be said, but I think that will do for a start.

[hamonpari]

Thank you so much Speed. I am looking after some reseller accounts,
About my reviewclick forum, I have started adsense revenue sharing program, I am getting some posts by this.
Lets Hope for the Best

[speed]

Good luck with it.