Epic AMA thread at TheFastlaneForum

Xdreamer

Banned for 7 days
Aug 5, 2008
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I hope this wasn't posted before (yes, I DID search first) but this thread is epic. Pretty indepth AMA thread of a millionaire speaking about his success/failures and more interesting stuff.


Wasn't sure if this is the right forum, if not feel free to move it though.
 
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limitup said:
Yeah I used to lurk at wickedfire. Mainly just for the entertainment value. The noise there is so ridiculous, it stopped being a useful forum a long time ago. Berto's exodus is what reminded me I should spend more time here instead.

:crap:
 
But there are plenty guys with porn addictions and accounts dedicated to interrupting threads with porn because... well, it's "cool". When I get together with the fellas and "shoot the shit" we always pull out our phones and surf porn together... Doesn't everyone? That's normal right?

In fact they'll be here any minute now and the "hey look at me I'm cool because I encourage porn in marketing forum" types will show up to support. That attitude over the past few years is what really makes this place such a great resource. Glad to see it finally getting the respect it deserves and being taken seriously.
 
I'm not sure why everybody is on the "WF went to shit" train. Ask good questions and you will get good answers, ask dumb shit and you get the dickroll. Disregard STS and you'll be fine as the other sub forums are free of trolls and conspiracy theories.

Not sure what WF looked like 5 years ago, maybe people were sharing bullet-proof multi million business blueprints left and right.
 
I'm not sure why everybody is on the "WF went to shit" train. Ask good questions and you will get good answers, ask dumb shit and you get the dickroll. Disregard STS and you'll be fine as the other sub forums are free of trolls and conspiracy theories.

Not sure what WF looked like 5 years ago, maybe people were sharing bullet-proof multi million business blueprints left and right.
You're not? Really?

Here lemme help, click here.

Those results can change at any given moment yet I am confident that at least 95% of what you see in those results is STS threads over unimportant shit or racist, political, ,porn, and conspiracy nutjobs that are for some reason increasingly tolerated here. The rest are BST people trying to sell you crap.

Sure, you can avoid STS, but again... I'm failing to see how you you could be "not sure" where the WF went to shit stuff is coming from. Unless you think it's always been 95%+ garbage and that's a great thing?

No one is saying there aren't epic threads here still. We're just saying the general maturity level and change of STS from a truly fun shooting the shit section to a cesspool of racism and general batshit craziness is getting out of hand.

People have noticed and a lot of good folks that don't rely on their reputation with noobs so they can sell them shit are leaving.
 
You're not? Really?

Here lemme help, click here.

Those results can change at any given moment yet I am confident that at least 95% of what you see in those results is STS threads over unimportant shit or racist, political, ,porn, and conspiracy nutjobs that are for some reason increasingly tolerated here. The rest are BST people trying to sell you crap.

Sure, you can avoid STS, but again... I'm failing to see how you you could be "not sure" where the WF went to shit stuff is coming from. Unless you think it's always been 95%+ garbage and that's a great thing?

No one is saying there aren't epic threads here still. We're just saying the general maturity level and change of STS from a truly fun shooting the shit section to a cesspool of racism and general batshit craziness is getting out of hand.

People have noticed and a lot of good folks that don't rely on their reputation with noobs so they can sell them shit are leaving.

So what you're basically saying is that because more people participate in the offtopic section of a forum the forum turns to shit?

What was the forum like 5-6 years ago? Seems like a lot of people think that those were the golden times and now everything is just shit. Did they share the latest uber secret dominate Google tricks or PPC campaigns that made them a few million? I found WF in late 2009 so I might have missed that party, but I can understand that less info is shared now that there are 150k+ registered members and shittons of lurkers around.

What I like about WF is that you can still ask legitimate questions and get tons of good replies, a few nice boobs and a dickroll here and there for fun. I met tons of great people on Wickedfire which helped me grow my business far more than any good forum thread could possible do.

Just my 2c.
 
It's like that with all communities, some people eventually end up saying stuff like "this forum sucks nowadays" but personally, I don't think WF went down the shitter.

In fact, I'd say there are more successful people on WF now than a few years ago.

But if you're interacting with the community in a "there aren't enough threads telling me how to make Internet moniez" manner, you're doing it wrong.

WF is a place where lots of smart webmasters hang out because they like its "no bs" atmosphere. Nobody's gonna share any secrets because someone who's smart enough to think of great business models is smart enough to know when to keep his/her fucking mouth shut.

Would you start a thread about the strategies you came up with after months/years of hard work?

I know I wouldn't and let's be honest, neither would you.

There are lots of great threads where people give advice and talk about some of their achievements/mistakes/whatever but nobody's going to share actual secrets. Forums like WF can be a good place to learn the basics but as far as the missing ingredient that separates winners from losers is concerned, you have to figure that stuff out yourself. You're on your own.

What makes WF great is its networking potential.

That's what most people don't understand.

It can be a great place to meet smart people. build relationships and occasionally engage in deeply perverted gay buttsex.

Oh and why the fuck should the OP be banned?

The forum he linked to isn't even a webmaster community, it's a forum about making money in general, not exactly a place that can be considered a WF competitor.
 
So what you're basically saying is that because more people participate in the offtopic section of a forum the forum turns to shit?

What was the forum like 5-6 years ago? Seems like a lot of people think that those were the golden times and now everything is just shit. Did they share the latest uber secret dominate Google tricks or PPC campaigns that made them a few million? I found WF in late 2009 so I might have missed that party, but I can understand that less info is shared now that there are 150k+ registered members and shittons of lurkers around.

What I like about WF is that you can still ask legitimate questions and get tons of good replies, a few nice boobs and a dickroll here and there for fun. I met tons of great people on Wickedfire which helped me grow my business far more than any good forum thread could possible do.

Just my 2c.

I'd have to disagree here. I've had post that people generously helped out by offering solid advice, and other threads that went Full Troll. Neither one of those threads were bad questions or observations.

WF isn't what it use to be, but the enlightment section has made it much better - it's easier to find threads THAT ACTUALLY HELP PEOPLE instead of flaming those with less thread posts who are asking questions.

Anyways, Wickedfire is all about how you use it. I use Wickedfire as a resource to learn more tips and tricks and apply it to what i'm doing - just reading about an idea does nothing for you unless you got out and experiment (which most people don't).

I think Wickedfire is getting better because of the enlightment section (which i hope people don't stop giving out advice like that) but worse with overall trolling and instant flaming of those looking for advice.

I think Wickedfire should offer a paid membership or something into a No Bullshit forum area where case studies are aplenty (varying over everything), advice is going around like wildfire, and everyone is making money by improving on someone elses tip, then giving back. Maybe there is too much competition on Wickedfire amongst us that we don't want to share what we're doing/how we're doing it because we're afraid it will dry up as soon as someone reverse engineers something and starts selling the advice somewhere else.

I don't know, but i'm willing to stick around just for the members who actually give back to the community (I hope to pull my own weight as well) and realize that the internet is a big place, full of ideas and lacking actual action.
 
It's like that with all communities, some people eventually end up saying stuff like "this forum sucks nowadays" but personally, I don't think WF went down the shitter.

In fact, I'd say there are more successful people on WF now than a few years ago.

But if you're interacting with the community in a "there aren't enough threads telling me how to make Internet moniez" manner, you're doing it wrong.

WF is a place where lots of smart webmasters hang out because they like its "no bs" atmosphere. Nobody's gonna share any secrets because someone who's smart enough to think of great business models is smart enough to know when to keep his/her fucking mouth shut.

Would you start a thread about the strategies you came up with after months/years of hard work?

I know I wouldn't and let's be honest, neither would you.

There are lots of great threads where people give advice and talk about some of their achievements/mistakes/whatever but nobody's going to share actual secrets. Forums like WF can be a good place to learn the basics but as far as the missing ingredient that separates winners from losers is concerned, you have to figure that stuff out yourself. You're on your own.

What makes WF great is its networking potential.

That's what most people don't understand.

It can be a great place to meet smart people. build relationships and occasionally engage in deeply perverted gay buttsex.

Oh and why the fuck should the OP be banned?

The forum he linked to isn't even a webmaster community, it's a forum about making money in general, not exactly a place that can be considered a WF competitor.

+rep. If I could hear about peoples failures, I would be much more happier than learning about how people made a bunch of money using a certain technique - at least I would know what NOT to do and keep the experiment going.
 
People whining about how much better things used to be are just indirectly wanting you to measure their epeen. It's a plea to tradition and how awesome they were for being on the bandwagon back then.
 
Great thread, sucks that you'll probably be banned for posting another forum on here as there's very little tolerance for that (for some reason).

In regards to the whole "WF is getting shittier" debate, there has definitely been a demographic change here since I started lurking in '07 sometime. I posted about it in some old thread (graphs here) and of course was met with troll replies.

Either get used to the crowd changing, or leave. As some folks have alluded to in this post, a lot of older active members have left. I would be interested to see how many of the 150,000 plus accounts are active, given that we've fallen out of compete and the alexa rank is trending downward pretty quickly.

It can be challenging to surround yourself with the exact "perfect" crowd you're looking for. I'm a member of the Vancouver Board of Trade (a fancy name for our Chamber of Commerce) and I find myself complaining after each event I attend that there's very few actual entrepreneurs / business owners to network with there. Almost everyone I open a conversation with is a {realtor | mortgage broker | financial services salesperson | some other shill | guru wannabe | etc.} that is just looking to sell their shit and otherwise couldn't give a fuck about you.

However: it's not up to the Vancouver Board of Trade to start kicking them all out because I'm not finding what I want; it's up to me to leave and either build or keep hunting for a group of actual business owners who want to share experiences and overcome challenges without trying to sell each other anything. Once my business(es) get to $1 million in annual revenue I will be joining Entrepreneurs' Organization because that's exactly how their system works. No hired guns, no shills, no selling. Owners/founders of the business only.

Final note: I have quite a few posts that I've wanted to write (reverse engineering media release campaigns, detailing traffic benefits from blogging and proper content generation and promotion, etc.) but I don't bother simply because I'm not interested in being banned.