Wickedfire: Our New Years Resolutions
- Thread starter chatmasta
- Start date
This is so true, to so many new people, IM = SEO. They completely forget there are so many other resources and methods to gaining traffic. It seems the basis for newbs is to make a site, follow all their "advised" onpage, slap adsense on and throw a tonne of shitty links at their site to try and rank.
How many times do I have to say it: Wickedfire's value is in the members, not the forum itself. Just talking to blokblok, grindstone, mont, and drew clement once has made me more money than I ever imagined I'd make. Hell even Icetoeskimos and I occasionally bounce ideas off of each other on skype in between talking about murder, rape, and other heinous things.
haha, yes they are. That's not the reason though.
Lack of moderation for a long time.
Banning most of the active users.
I'm not arguing if the bans were justified or not, because I don't care. Those are the two big reasons though. After the bans
everyone went to some place else (don't pm and ask me where, because I won't say) and the section didn't recover.
The only way we could keep people from doing things in that section that were fucked was to troll them like we do in STS until
they left. That helped create an atmosphere where people didn't want to ask and get help either.
I kind of agree with the OP. I'd love to help other members. I even venture into the Newbie section occasionally to see if there are any questions I could answer. There usually aren't. The problem for me is that too many people are interested in pretending to build a quality site or a real business. They want to rely entirely on tricks and shortcuts. It's the kind of mentality that makes people think they can create an authority site by outsourcing a bunch of mediocre-quality 500 word articles. I don't have anything to contribute to people who think that way.
I just build quality sites about things that interest me and try to find ways to make money from them. If you're interested in doing that, I could probably give you some advice on things like usability, site structure, on-page SEO, creating content based on keyword research, etc. Unfortunately, for every member who has succeeded with quality sites (trigatch4 for example), there are dozens of members who want to use shortcuts for everything from content to marketing. I'm not trying to imply that I have all the answers. I was hit by Penguin and other 2012 updates like many on here. That is why I'm working on building a more sustainable business. Because of that, I can't provide value to anyone still trying to make money with crappy links and content. When I start seeing regular questions related to the topics I know about, I will happily try to help.
A few weeks ago I started a rough draft of a post about my current project, but I've been reluctant to finish and submit it. There doesn't seem to be much of an audience for it. I'm not a clever marketer or a great SEO by any means, but I do know how to create quality content and usually do fairly well at ranking it. I've been working toward launching a membership site because I think my content is good enough that people will pay for it (a small test seems to indicate that I'm right about this). I really don't know what I'm doing, and a lot of this is trial and error, but I'd gladly post a case study based on this project if I thought anyone would be interested. However, when I look at the kind of threads that usually get attention, I don't see the point.
I just build quality sites about things that interest me and try to find ways to make money from them. If you're interested in doing that, I could probably give you some advice on things like usability, site structure, on-page SEO, creating content based on keyword research, etc. Unfortunately, for every member who has succeeded with quality sites (trigatch4 for example), there are dozens of members who want to use shortcuts for everything from content to marketing. I'm not trying to imply that I have all the answers. I was hit by Penguin and other 2012 updates like many on here. That is why I'm working on building a more sustainable business. Because of that, I can't provide value to anyone still trying to make money with crappy links and content. When I start seeing regular questions related to the topics I know about, I will happily try to help.
A few weeks ago I started a rough draft of a post about my current project, but I've been reluctant to finish and submit it. There doesn't seem to be much of an audience for it. I'm not a clever marketer or a great SEO by any means, but I do know how to create quality content and usually do fairly well at ranking it. I've been working toward launching a membership site because I think my content is good enough that people will pay for it (a small test seems to indicate that I'm right about this). I really don't know what I'm doing, and a lot of this is trial and error, but I'd gladly post a case study based on this project if I thought anyone would be interested. However, when I look at the kind of threads that usually get attention, I don't see the point.
I'd be interested in posts talking about stuff like that even if I'm not really into SEO. I like reading quality stuff about things I know nothing about.
This.
You need to make some quality posts and threads and try to "network". Fuck I hate that word.
You can learn more in 1 solid skype chat than you can from reading on here. Why don't you try shooting a PM to someone who has posted something relevant to what you are trying to learn.
Remember when you PM'd me about ecommerce?
Jeffrey is right.. the value is in the members and honestly everything shouldn't be posted publicly for everyone to see anyways.
This this and that
It amazes me what the WF membership is willing to do for you if you just ask. If you just take take take you will never realize the full potential of WF. Its way more than gun threads and spinning dicks. Give some and see what happens.
If your not sure how to go about this try this one thing. Go do some research on a topic people here like to bitch about and then put together a well thought out thread and watch what happens. You will get bombarded with PMs if you do it right. Nurture those relationships. Reap the rewards. Just don't take more than you give
This x 1000. F5ing STS, while usually entertaining as hell, doesn't lend itself towards business building. Meanwhile, there's three threads at or near the top of Traffic & Content right now where if a total n00b (couldn't even install WP n00b level) applied (TOOK MASSIVE ACTION!!!) the best practices from all three consistently + an affiliate account at any network (that pays) would equal a net positive ROI within a couple weeks. With nothing out of pocket except their time.
You going to find that at any other forum? Doubtful...Is it step by step in a $7 ebook? No. Is the value and the information there for a discerning individual willing to put in the work to connect the dots and actually do the work? Yes. This place is a gold mine for those willing to dig in, pyrite for those who want it handed to them on a plate.
If we dumb it down to the lowest common denominator, that brings the overall quality down in return. Higher barriers of entry to smart n00bs creates better quality non n00bs (while culling the herd exponentially in the process) that at some point on some level will give back to the community, further perpetuating the cycle that is WF.
Don't fix what isn't broken.
A thousand times this.
There used to be actual useful content, with boobs and bullshit injected inbetween. Now there's boobs and bullshit, with moderately okay content injected inbetween. Hell, most of the truly good shit is coming from relative newbies who aren't yet afraid to let their failures out into the open. I understand not letting the secret sauce out into the open, but many previously useful and informative people locked up tight and stopped saying anything of value.
I've been here for a long time and I love you guys, but we need to do something to make this relevant again. The mods could probably do some house cleaning(removing random pictures from threads that actually have potential), but all that will do is make the forum more empty if there's not people posting content to back it up.
There used to be actual useful content, with boobs and bullshit injected inbetween. Now there's boobs and bullshit, with moderately okay content injected inbetween. Hell, most of the truly good shit is coming from relative newbies who aren't yet afraid to let their failures out into the open. I understand not letting the secret sauce out into the open, but many previously useful and informative people locked up tight and stopped saying anything of value.
I've been here for a long time and I love you guys, but we need to do something to make this relevant again. The mods could probably do some house cleaning(removing random pictures from threads that actually have potential), but all that will do is make the forum more empty if there's not people posting content to back it up.
IMO lack of share and quality content here comes from lack of trust.
CCarter et al have dropped gems this year to be sure, but many of us hold ace cards that we won't show for obvious reasons.
Forums by design are flawed due to wide open exposure. Skype is more protected
CCarter et al have dropped gems this year to be sure, but many of us hold ace cards that we won't show for obvious reasons.
Forums by design are flawed due to wide open exposure. Skype is more protected
Carter posts one of the best threads I've seen in a while and this bitch says WF isn't helping people anymore?
You have two separate complaints. The first one, that WF doesn't help people, is complete BS.
The second one, that WF is not refined, sophisticated, and cultured, will never change. Most IMers tend to be young, male, sarcastic, addicted to porn, immature, and crude. That tendency might have increased in emphasis lately, but it's merely a symptom of the demographic that hangs out here.
It's not difficult. The "no BS/fuck you" attitude keeps scammers away, the literal gold in some of these threads makes you money, and the rest of the junior high crap can easily be ignored if you so wish. I'm pretty sure nobody gives a fuck how the media/society views them.
