Business Opportunity - Forum Community Building

Last night I was at one of my favourite forums, the SitePoint Marketplace checking out websites for sale. My last article on how to buy a website and sell it for profit piqued my interest in online property so I thought I would start actively monitoring forums to try and find a bargain or a site that would fit well in my portfolio.

I stumbled across a very new site, in fact a relatively new idea altogether that I thought was brilliant. I’ve written a couple of articles on how to build a forum community and in them I’ve explained the hardest part about forum building is getting past the early stages where you have no members and no posts. The crux of the problem is that you need discussion in order to create more discussion, so until you get a critical mass of active members your forum chugs along at a snails pace. The advice I provided to get you past the early stages involves a lot of work and daily effort, not something every webmaster out there is prepared to do or has the patience for. This new website business concept helps to solve this problem.

The site is called ForumLaunch.com and is currently being auctioned off for the second time. In the first auction it went for $850 USD and based on the details of that auction the site seemed to be growing very fast - the first owner kept updating the auction that more new pending sales had come through right up to the point the site was sold. The second owner is asking for $2,500 now after running the site for a second month and bringing in $600+ profit on revenues of $1900+.

It’s the idea behind the business though that really grabbed my interest. The service is like a rent-a-crowd, you buy content for your new fledgling forum to help it get off the ground. Your money will buy you a certain amount of posts in a certain amount of new topics written by a handful of new members. These members are provided by the business and will go to work over a set timeframe to populate your empty forum with on-topic discussion so when people first visit your forum they will be more likely to join in with the conversation rather then click away past your dead forum.

As soon as I comprehended this idea I had all but resigned myself to either buying the site or setting up my own version of the service, the entrepreneur blood rush had set in. I think it’s a great idea that has a strong demand (judging by my research so far and the results of the second owner of ForumLaunch, it’s booming with not much advertising effort - demand is there), and the business model is something I’ve had a lot of experience with.

As the owner of a business like this success rests on your ability to locate and hire the best writers for your company (sounds like a certain essay editing business I know of). The writers have to possess a reasonable level of written English, be mature, sensible and have an interest in a broad range of topics so they can participate intelligently in forums focused on many different industries. The key success factor is to impress clients with quality, on-topic posts, that stimulate further conversation and member sign-ups. If you can find good writers that can write hundreds to even thousands of posts per month, and lots of them willing to do it at rates of pay of about 5-10 cents per post (forum posting is not rocket science, many people spend their free time in forums so being paid to do so is appealing) then you have the tools to build the business.

Based on the research I did most of the marketing has been conducted in webmaster forums since this is the best place to find people that own forums. Because of this you can leverage your writing staff, the forum posters, to go to work as advertising staff as well simply by having them put an advertising line in their signature files when they post at non-client forums and occasionally mentioning the service when appropriate (which is along the lines of something that the second owner of ForumLaunch was doing). Needless to say there are other ways to market a service like this but if just this simple method is already bringing in results then I imagine, currently, supply is way below demand - people just didn’t think to offer this service until now and consequently people haven’t thought to pay for this service either since they had never been exposed to it in a business format (traffic exchanges and paying for posts is not a new concept of course, but professionalising it under a business format is, as far as I can tell, a relatively new idea).

As you can know doubt tell I got really excited about this idea and spent about four hours last night researching and “buzzing” about it. During this time I had a little Yaro on my shoulder reminding me that I’m not in any position to start another business like this. By the end of the night the little Yaro had got his message through and I took my own advice, I’m not going to take on any more work myself until my current projects are 100% automated or sold off. The business matches me perfectly and I know I have the skills to make it work, but the time and energy has to be spent elsewhere at the moment (sigh…). If however I was an entrepreneur looking to start my first Internet business or I had a good hour or two each day spare to focus on another business I would seriously consider this idea (is this you? See below for details on an Internet business traineeship I’m offering).

The day-to-day operating of a business like this takes some energy and there will always be little problems arising from the “people factor” but the concept is simple enough, which is always a good sign. I have concerns about the long term viability of the idea since already imitators are setting up shop. Establishing a good competitive advantage will be vital for long term success (I have some ideas on how to do this too). There are some grumbles from people that the concept of paying people to post in forums goes against the nature of a forum community, and this may be true, but a service like this definitely has it’s place, especially as a booster shot or kick-start for a new forum. All in all there just aren’t that many negatives especially at this early stage where the market is not too competitive, which however I don’t think will be the case for very long. No matter what, I’m hooked on the idea.

Internet Business Traineeship

Are you interested in starting your own Internet business but don’t know where to begin? I like the above idea so much that I’m looking for a partner, someone willing to spend two hours every day to build an Internet business. You will be provided with my mentoring and strategic direction throughout the whole process and will be a 50% owner in the operation (including the profits). The infrastructure (website hosting, domain name) will be provided as well as the exact steps to get the business operational. You do not need to invest anything but your own time and energy and be willing follow my advice and learn what it takes to operate an Internet business. You will be expected to “be the boss”, make the decisions and take responsibility for your actions. My role will be mentor, coach and investor, yours will be entrepreneur.

If this appeals to you please email a small spiel about you to yaroATBetterEditDotCom. Include your age, sex, location, links to any websites you own or writing you have done, details about what you currently do (university/school/work) and how flexible your timetable is. Also include a 1-5 paragraph explanation on why you want to be involved with this web project.