Nice Forum.
My Fiancee' is a writer and I will be sending her your link. (She may already be a member there for all I know. lol)
I might be a bit off base here, but shouldn't you have like a Classified Section on the site? Or did I miss it?
Charge a fee like Jon does here for your members to place adds and then use your skillz to drive OUTSIDE traffic to "their" classified ads on your site.
I mean, they are Creative Writers and from the few threads I read through they would be GREAT at writing Articles or even Short Stories for website owners. Or even taking DULL information and TRANSFORMING it into an INTERESTING eBook to read that could be sold.
So, you could then market your Classifieds to outside people and charge a fee for WANTED ADS that your membership could look through to do some work and then they too could make some money.
Thanks! I don't have a classifieds section yet, but what you described is on my to-do list for the site. I just need to do some house-keeping first. I think it's a good idea though and will certainly implement it soon. The hardest part at first will be getting people like you folks there to post ads, but I know for sure my member-base will love the feature.
The eBook idea might be more difficult, but it's certainly worth exploring after I implement some of the other ideas. Thanks for picking out those aff programs too. I'll take a look at them and test them out if they're any good.
Sounds like you need a boss brah.
Fuuk that! :angryfire: The only person I will ever be able to work for is myself.
Struggled with a similar problem for a long ass time, finally (after years) being forced against the wall to focus on just the most important shit. Are you comfortable? Do you have no reason to focus on one thing? If you were about to be homeless - would you still be skipping from idea to idea? Odds are you're comfortable enough for fear to not be motivating you to do anything.
I'm far from comfortable, but not really facing any type of fear. I was too comfortable in the past though, and I slipped to where I am now. Also oddly, a sort of apathy. But fuck that. I think I'm at a turning point and this thread has helped me a lot so far. It's showing me things I already knew, but since you guys are affirming it, I know I'm on the right track. It's just a matter of getting the willpower, the commitment, and following through.
Shit dude. I've been a member of your forum for a while -- always thought it was a pet-project for someone who made money as a writer or something like that.
As others have mentioned: you really have an untapped goldmine with that forum. Start using the top sidebar for advertising. Create a "writer's tools" subforum, or similar, and make it mandatory for new members to read it -- have your admins talking about these tools and how they're essential to help new wiriters.
The "Snowflake Pro" tool, and other such products would be great sellers on your forum considering the how your traffic numbers have been building over the last couple of years.
That's awesome! It's good to hear from someone who's actually a member. It was my pet-project in high school when I started, which was when I was really into creative writing. From then I moved onto web development and other business ventures. I still like to write occasionally though.
The writer's tool idea isn't a bad one, and it could potentially make a lot of money. My only hesitation is because I want to make sure I add value to my users and keep the user base thinking I have a low spam/advertising push. As long as these tools aren't too intrusive on the site and as long as they add value this might be worthwhile. Will look into this as well.
First things u need to do is install vbSEO or equivalent and get rid of the dynamic URLs + sesson IDs... You likely have huge internal, duplicate content issues...
Do you really think it's a big deal? I've looked into switching either to vbSEO or vbulletin's built in SEO-friendly structure, but I'm afraid I'll lose rankings. I've asked on a few forums in the past year or two about it, and the response is always the same: Google is advanced enough that you don't need friendly urls, changing risks your seo rankings, and there's no real benefit aside from url cosmetics. My inclination has always been to change the URLs, but I've always been told there's probably no benefit there. False?
As someone else said, you are sitting on a goldmine with that creative writing forum. Time to start digging:
- Sort out your fucking software / server. I keep getting DB errors.
- Sell everything apart from the creative writing forum. You need a mental clear-out. Seriously, every time I dump stuff, I always make 4x as much money as the thing I dumped was making me. It's feels like it's some magical unicorn shit happening, but I know it's just because my income is inversely proportional to how distracted I am. Yours is too.
- Unless you have some seriously valuable domains (like sex.com or similar), prioritise dumping them quickly over holding out and getting the maximum value. Again, your problem is distraction, and the mental baggage cost of having them around is likely much bigger than the money you'll get from holding them.
- Making money through writing is one of oldest direct marketing niches around. I remember it from the Sunday papers when I was a kid, a long time before the Internet was around. There is plenty of money there.
- Money comes from customer pain. What sort of pains would people on a creative writing forum have? How about how to make a living from writing? There are some great courses on that, so there's no need to sell shitty clickbank/wafo products. American Writers & Artists Inc. | Make Money Writing | Copywriting Courses | Get Paid To Write | Copywriting Careers has a good rep. Building your own would be even better.
Other pains are beating procrastination as a writer, and becoming a better writer, but selling money is easier than selling self-improvement. I'm sure there's probably software and stuff like that you can sell (Dragon dictate? )
- Build a list... fill an autoresponder sequence with stuff like interviews with people who've made the transition to full time writing, run a writing competition, or have something like nanowrimo for your members.
- If you don't budget already, get Personal Budget Software - Finance Software for Windows & Mac and get a handle on your outgoings. That will make covering the bills a lot easier.
- If you're stuck for ideas as to what to sell, just look at your forum. Which questions come up again and again?
- Get someone to hold you accountable. How about starting a thread here, like Skyfire has, but with a voluntary $500 donation to a charity of WF's choosing if you get distracted or fail to post. Nothing like a financial penalty to keep your eye on the ball. Go 30 days at a time to make it realistic.
- Like many of us here (me most definitely included), your biggest limitation is your attention. Stop squandering it. EVERYTHING you are involved with has an opportunity cost on your mental bandwidth, even if you're not spending much time on it. Pick one project, then work with it until either it's up and running, or you declare it a failure. Only then should you go on to the next one.
Thanks bro, this is an awesome list. You make some very valuable points, and I think you're spot on regarding how revenue is inversely proportional to distractibility. Step #1: remove distractions.
Thank you all who've participated in this thread. You've given me a lot of good advice and feedback. I think I know exactly what I need to do with my forum, and have actually for some time, but everyone's suggestions have affirmed I was on the right track. I just need to put in the time.
Any thoughts on making money from the existing eBook market? Maybe sell services like a promotional package for writers who already have a book written and they're trying to launch, sell eBooks to members, or something else?
