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Developing and monetizing
forums and communities.
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“The Web's top hangout for lonely folk” History of Forums
Forums have been around forever and
ever –
Before Chat
Before Social Media
Before Blogs
Before Twitter
Before The Dinosaurs
Earliest forums dated back to 1994 - AVS
Since 1995!2
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Easier Said then DoneGrowing a site from scratch
• Topic
• Pick a topic that you love/have expertise
• Friends
• Recruit all of your friends to help
• Momentum
• The hardest part is lift off!
• Content
• The most important thing forums have to
offer is content – the more the better!
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Why have forums not evolved/become
mainstream?
• The overall design is still very antiquated
• Mostly started for passion and not for
business
• Not sexy
• Never covered in media/no mainstream
appeal
• Big Business not behind it
• Known as a place for us nerds to gather
• Other distractions – Facebook, twitter, blogs
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5L
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L4P.com – Growing a site from
ScratchOur Story – A combination of Design,
Branding, Events and Brand ambassadors
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Hype/Branding/L4P.com
In the hypercompetitive world of
Automotive based forums we had to come
out of the gate strong!
- we put our money and resources where
our mouth was..
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Branding - Luxury4play.com
• We went out and purchased a 3 digit domain
L4P.com – almost unheard of in the forum
space
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Brand recognition aka
“repping”Giving your community the sense of belonging,
exclusivity and ownership.
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Repping/Branding Takes off!
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Merchandise
Members started to buy any and all merchandise with
our Logo on it!
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Members taking it a little too far…
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EEEK!
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Custom Made Avatars – huge
hit!
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Events – show your face!
Started a cross country car rally – Goldrush~
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Forums 2.0
• Google gets smarter – forums continue to index better• Google starts to clamp down on indexing content farms and
start to reward real content
• Much prettier• Forums are starting to look more modern
• Technologies• Dedicated advertising technologies made specifically for forum
content• TapaTalk
• Postrealease
• VigLink
• vBseo
• vBulletin
• Taken more seriously – IB, VS, CG
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Making money with your
forum• Most common issues on existing forums
- People expect it for free???
• Ease in to monetizing your forum
• Least aggressive –> Most aggressive
• Get the support of your inner team,
then your community
• Explain the costs and reasoning
• Give back – events, giveaways,
donations16
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Getting the last drip of Juice from your
Orange• AdSense• The main staple of making money online with any website
• Sponsorships• The original way for forums to survive
• Are you selling your yearly space too cheap?
• Can you sell on a CPM?
• Increase price every year/with increased traffic
• Don’t give the farm away for free!
• New technologies – try them out – they work• Postrelease
• Viglink
• In text player –Konetra, Vibrant
• Data reselling• Rapleaf, Chango, Blue Kai
• Tapatalk
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