In the ancient computer that serves as part of the Balkhis archives there is a folder. Its a folder that is opened hundreds of times over the course of a week and within it are projects too numerous to mention. Now this old workhorse of a computer is retiring from the Balkhis line up in [...]

Online forums are a great way to interact with experienced people in various fields from all over the world. Not only do you learn many things and promote your websites but you also make friends. Every day many forums are created, most of these forums just fail to even start properly. Starting and managing a forum is way more difficult than running a blog.

Before anything you must pick the right niche for the forum, and make sure you have a lot of knowledge in that field. Then you have to pick a forum software, there are many paid and free softwares available, I recommend vBulletin as it is THE best and most popular. Then you have to pick a good design, custom made if possible and lastly some add-ons.

Now to the main stuff:

You need to get members to join. You can hold a contest, which is the best way. You can also invite your friends who can help you.

Then as an admin you yourself have to be very active and post threads which inspire and make people post. You have to post threads that not only cannot be found anywhere else but also really help people. People mainly join forums to learn new things, if you only have posts like ‘How old are you?’ it really is not going to work.

As the forum grows you have to appoint moderators, try and pick people you know. You can face many problems if you pick a bad team. You must pick friendly people who also know how to use the forum software you are using; also your moderators must contribute regularly.

Keeping the momentum going- At some point of time you will reach a stage where activity slows down. Here you just have to do something. Either you can hold contests or hire paid posters.

Now you must remember that forums are not something that you can make in a day, or a month. Successful forums take a lot of time to make. You have to keep putting in effort till the forum settles down. Promotion- Remember the more posts that take place, the more individuals will join. This is a “snowball” effect of forums, thus marketing must be done consistently and properly.

Ways of promoting your forum:

-Signature links in other forums of your niche.
-Mailing friends.
-Pay Per Click advertising.

Just like any other Internet venture, you need to take care of the hosting and maintenance of your forum. If your forum regularly has “downtime”, you will definitely lose members quickly, and a forum that has many coding mistakes will quickly frustrate all your visitors. You have to settle with a reliable host. If your forum is growing a lot, you may have to take a VPS.

You may be spending a lot on your forum. You just cannot keep spending a lot and not getting anything back in return. You have to monetize your site. But you have to keep in mind two things:
-Do not over monetize and stuff it with advertisements, as you will tick members off.
-Do not monetize it too early when you have very few members.

The best methods of advertising are private advertisements, but if your forum is new it is very tough to find advertisers. After using many alternatives, I think the best solution is Google AdSense. The rates per click is decent and you can earn even with a new forum. However, after some time people will turn blind towards these ads.

I have covered all the basics in this post and I hoped you liked it and learnt something from it.

This post was written by Farrhad A who has run many forums in the past and recently has started a new forum, Webmaster Peers. If you own a website and want to learn and interact with other website owners and developers you should join the forum.

As a blogger what do you think is your greatest skill? I think the reason what makes the top bloggers different from others is that they have the greatest blogging skill. This is one of the skills that every beginner needs to have if they want to become an expert. And you will be surprised when I tell you that it is not writing good content. It is not getting your users engaged. It is not having the convincing voice. Instead it is:

Learning From Your Yesterday’s Experience and Having a More Productive Day Today

Basically it is saying that you become a Better Blogger each day faster and faster. Technically most people learn over the course of the days and months. That is because they analyze the site over the six month period. I am telling you to analyze your blogs daily.

Every night before I sleep, I try to do this. It is something that I learnt from Benjamin Franklin’s Biography. He used to look over his day before he sleep and put himself as an outsider which led him to learn more about himself. He improved his mistakes and now we see him on the 100 Dollar Bill.

Before you are ready to go to bed, check your stats for that day. See what you did which made you either gain or lose traffic. Think of ways what you can do tomorrow to improve, and then do those tricks. And repeat the process every day. And I will guarantee that it will work.

Think of it from the perspective of a production company. Think of yourself as a shoe production company. You started off along with two others company with the same resources.

Company #1 – Starts out producing 15 shoes a day and kept this production rate. (No Improvement)

Company #2 – Starts out producing 15 shoes a day and increase their daily rate by 5 shoes. (Improvement Skill is Present – Most Bloggers are in this category)

Company #3 – Starts out producing 15 shoes a day and increase their production by 5 on the first day, then move it to second the next day, and then fifteen on the third day and so on. (Greatest Improvement – This is what you want to be)

Now I am sure you like the idea of #3, but how can you do this as a blogger? I have mentioned above what you I do, but there are three personality traits that you need to adapt before you can achieve this skill.

3 Personality Traits to Achieve the Greatest Skill of Blogging

Stay Focused – There are many things that can be improved in your blogging. But you can’t do it all at once. So start with one aspect and work your way up. When you try to do it all at once, you either get distracted, or unmotivated. Which is a reason why most bloggers quit. If you don’t make blogging a chore, then you will stay motivated. And in order to do that you need to stay focused. Take a week to improve, your design, then one week to old posts, then one week to improve your SEO. Make as many categories that needs improvement, and then rotate them in cyclical manner weekly, daily, however you like it.

Never Give Up – Don’t ever give up this method. It might seem hard, and you might think that you are stressing yourself. But remember that this is the best way to improve faster and take the competitive edge over your peers.

Don’t Be Arrogant – No matter how much you know, you will never know enough. This is one trait that you must have in order to be a fast improver. Try to learn new things every day. Push yourself beyond your limits.

I can tell you that this technique is not easy. But those who adapt to this style usually become better bloggers. I know I have improved alot, and I am still no where close to my full potential. This technique not only works with blogging, but it works with entrepreneurship, and daily life as well.

Just remember don’t give up and try to improve at a faster rate than constant improvement rate. This way you will achieve success faster.

When advertisers are looking to buy ads on your site, they consider the page views. Because that is how they determine whether the cost of the banner is fair or not. With the page views they can calculate the impressions. Higher impression results into higher advertising spot value.

Now what others might tell you is that to increase traffic on your website because that will obviously increase your pageviews. For some people it gets really hard because they are either out of budget, or don’t want to advertise their site. Well in this post I am going to show you some ways which you can take within your website to increase the pageviews.

1. Interlinking

Interlinking between posts increase your pageviews. This is a trick that alot of top bloggers use. When you are writing a post, it often has terms or ideas that you have probably explained in details previously. Well then why don’t you link that post. Because someone reading this post, will eventually open that link, so they can understand the guidelines correctly.

I have read multiple posts that has links and links. These articles are so interesting, that I check out each of the other links, and I end up reading for hours due to this. I suggest you should try to interlink your posts as much as you can because it is going to help you.

2. Use Your Sidebar Effectively

Aside from your blog post, sidebar is you second major tool to increase page views. Add some popular posts on your sidebar, so your other users can see the top notch posts of your blog. This way when a user sees your post, they will head over to your other posts that they find interesting. This also decreases your bounce rate, so I suggest you implement this trick.

3. Multi-Page Posts

Have you ever seen forbes creating long lists. They use multi-page posts idea. It might be annoying when you are browsing, but it is a smart technique because thsi way you will get more pageviews. If you have a long list post, then just divide it into more pages. So people will open other pages, and this way you are increasing the value of your ad spots.

You might be thinking how you would do this. There is a plugin that is available for download called Multi-Page Toolkit

By implementing these 3 quick and simple tricks you will seriously increase your page views without increasing your budget. Implement these tricks on your website and increase your ad revenue.

As blogging is evolving, we are coming up with new methods to rank high, short cut tips to increase our traffic, and sometimes we don’t even reach the high metrics. That is because in the middle of all these new tricks, we are forgetting the classics. The old-fashioned Guide to Blogging Success still works. Don’t let the old-fashioned part of it fool you. You must implement the basics before climbing the next step, if you hop on to quick, it is easier to fall down further.

1. Be Patient

Majority of the blogs that are started are not successful, and the reason is because the blogger lose interest. They don’t have enough patience and perseverence. You have to be consistent with your writing. If you are not seeing the big numbers in comments, subscribers, and your user contribution then just be patience. The top blogs which you see today and envy started the same place where you did. The difference is, you just quitted, and they survived through the crucial hard times.

2. Stay Humble

You need to be humble in order to succeed. Classic saying but it does work. Blogs take years into making, and it is the love of your readers and the contribution that makes it go far. Whether it was a small peice, or the big peice, all of the links help. After achieving the point, you must not forget where you started from because it shows you that you should be humble and show your gratitude.

Your users did not owe you anything, so be thankful. Write them thank you notes, personally contact users.

Yes it takes time, but the little time and patience that you put in your blog shows that you are dedicated, not someone who is in for quick bucks. Always link to others because it was the links that put you where you are. You must not stop giving back to the society.

Don’t just write for yourself, write for the web. Because the web is full of riches and it is what we want it to be. Add quality to the web because we already have to much spam. If you write quality articles, I can guarantee you that you will succeed because it always stand out.

3. Be a Good Friend before You ask for Favors

A good blogger is a good friend. A big difference between spammers and good friends is that good friends only ask good friends to do them a favor, whereas spammers ask just about everyone. Think about it, lets say you meet a guy on the road, and few minutes later you asked them to help you move. Why would I want to help you move your house when we don’t even know each other that well. This is exactly what the other user would think, and they will ignore you in the future.

So before you ask others to start doing you favor, think about your relationship with them and is it equal. Do you do them favors as well? If you ask others to link to you, have you linked to them before.

Spammers usually send link requests to blogs when they have no clue what is going on the blog. Make sure you are genuine about your relationship. Because it is something that cannot be faked.

4. Remember You are a Blogger

While it is true that a small part of the day bloggers check stats. Don’t make it any bigger than that smaller part. I have seen people getting obsessed with their stats. I know I had obsessed with them for the longest time. I got over my habit. All that does is makes you procrastinate. It decreases your productivity, and you won’t be able to gain alot out of it. Bloggers get their success from the rate of their audience.

If you have built a good and loyal audience, who cares how much users you get, and how many pageviews you get. If you are getting good number of comments which are genuine, then you are good.

Blogger’s don’t put their value on success hundred percent instead they value their audience.

Building a successful blog is not a one day job. It takes years into making. Each comment, every link, every single post on your blog will build your blog’s reputatoin. Your reader’s caution will turn into their love and trust. And when you look back you will see how being consistent and going through the hard times has made you come this far.