Download - Forum Con - Raymond Lyle - Developing and Monetizing Forums and Communities

Confidential© VigLink All Rights Reserved.

Developing and monetizing

forums and communities.

2Confidential© VigLink All Rights Reserved.

“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


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!

3


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

4

5L


L4P.com – Growing a site from

ScratchOur Story – A combination of Design,

Branding, Events and Brand ambassadors

5


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..

6


Branding - Luxury4play.com

• We went out and purchased a 3 digit domain

L4P.com – almost unheard of in the forum

space

7


Brand recognition aka

“repping”Giving your community the sense of belonging,

exclusivity and ownership.

8


Repping/Branding Takes off!

9


Merchandise

Members started to buy any and all merchandise with

our Logo on it!

10


Members taking it a little too far…

11


EEEK!

12


Custom Made Avatars – huge

hit!

13


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

15


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


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

17


Thank You!

Any questions, comments

– [email protected]