Website, Blog, or Forum Question

[tonibtb]

Okay. Here is the biggest thing on my mind right now regarding my business and generating more revenue. Some of you have websites, some have blogs, and some have forums, and some of you have a combination of all three. My question is, which one of those could potentially generate more traffic, and thus more revenue by ways of affiliates, etc. I have a website for my business, but it doesn't really get that much traffic. Even if it did, I wouldn't know what to put on it to actually generate an income from it anyway. :lol:

So, I have a couple of ideas for additional websites that I could put a link on to my original website, but the other websites, or blog, or forum would probably generate more traffic and more revenue anyway because they would be more interesting (if I do it correctly). Here are my questions:

1. Which one would potentially generate more income: website, forum, or blog?

2. Why would that be the more ludacrative choice in the short or long term?

I am not looking to get rich quick here, but I would like to do this properly so that I can generate a decent income in addition to my freelance/contracting work. Any suggestions? :jack:

Thanks
Toni
www.ondemandvs.com

[Debbi]

Hi Toni,

To answer your question, any of the 3 can potentially generate more income. It's getting traffic to it that is the issue.

Forums are great because you can have a lot of people chatting and sharing information, and if the forum is a place people want to me, you have the potential to generate income from those people. If you have a lot of activity at your forum, you can place Google ads on them. The way these work is that people pay money to be seen in the ads based on their keywords. The google ad bar 'reads' the content on your page and places similar ads on the page, with the idea that if a visitor is reading about X they will like an ad about X. You get paid when someone clicks on those Google ads - I have no idea what the percentage is, it's always baffled me, but I have a client who consistently makes $500 - $600 per month on google ads at his forum.

Blogs are similar in that people can comment but it's not as robust (in my opinion) as a forum. However, the buzz in Search Engine Marketing is that blogs that are very rich in content place extremely high in the rankings - and that is what you want really to get more visitors.

A web site can be optimized and place high in the rankings, as well, so again, I think the key here is getting traffic. You can sit down and learn SEO yourself, work on your sites and get yourself ranked, or you can hire someone. Other ways to get traffic involve posting in forums with links to your site, submitting articles, possibly sending out a press release, maybe even doing a pay per click campaign of your own.

Once you get some decent traffic, you can think about selling ads on your web site.

I hope that helps. If you have any questions, you can drop me a PM if you want.

:D
D

[Lori]

Hey Toni :hello:

What topic are you thinking of working with? My advice is a combination of all three. But if you were to choose one, a blog would be my choice.

The reason search engines are favoring blogs so much is that they generally have freshly updated content. But you can achieve the same thing with a website.

I'm quite certain this forum wouldn't have gained what little popularity it has if the website didn't exist... However, the freelancemom blog is basically stand alone on a different server and gets its own very decent flow of traffic. It is actually one of the main traffic contributors to the FreelanceMom website aside from search engines.

I plan to blog on the freelancemom domain soon and look forward to seeing how that effects my search engine rankings.

The forum has only recently begun getting traffic from search engines and I'm certain its because of some serious tweaking I experimented with for SEO. I wish I had done it years ago.

Anyway -- maybe that isn't much help at all :zrazz:

In short, my experience has been that the main thing is networking, promoting, optimizing and adding good content to whatever medium you are using. Make sure you love the topic you are working with because it's going to be occupying LOTS of your time :D Make sure your content and concepts are original because you need to attract your visitors and gain their loyalty...

I'll be really interested in seeing what you come up with, I'm sure it will rock!

Lori

[tonibtb]

Thanks Lori and Debbi for your input and advice. Right now I am kind of leaning towards the blog first. In addition to the reasons you two have listed, it also just seems like a better way to test the waters.

One thing I am thinking of is an advice site in which people could post questions and receive answers on a broad range of topics on just about anything you can think of. For instance relationship questions, pregnancy, dating, work related, WAH related, etc. I of course would not be the only person offering the advice, I would have experienced advisors as well. They wouldn't have to possess a PHD or anything, just know what they are talking about. Kind of like Dear Abby in a sense.

Something else I had thought about what was a site for mature adults who have decided to make a change in their lives. This could be anything from going back to school, to adopting or having a baby, to moving to a different state, to divorce, to marrying, to changing careers ---anything a person typically over 30 would decide to change about their lives for fulfillment or improvement. Sort of like a "support group" if you will.

Lastly, I was considering a forum for Teens. Someplace similar to this place where they could talk and encourage each other positively.

These are some thoughts I have floating around in my head. Yes I know they have absolutely nothing to do with my current website, but doing either of the above would be a joy to me. Honestly speaking, I believe I am leaning towards the first one, which is the advice column. I would have articles of interest on the site as well. If done right I could probably incorporate some of my other two ideas into the advice column some kind of way. :t9:

[Lori]

These are some thoughts I have floating around in my head. Yes I know they have absolutely nothing to do with my current website, but doing either of the above would be a joy to me. Honestly speaking, I believe I am leaning towards the first one, which is the advice column. I would have articles of interest on the site as well. If done right I could probably incorporate some of my other two ideas into the advice column some kind of way.

Sounds awesome Toni!

[vishalrao]

Hello Toni,

Forums can be a great source of fresh information to search engines. But maintaining and promoting it can be a massive task. You see, it's not at all easy to start a forum from scratch and you can easily get frustrated by not seeing any activity early on.

My advice would be to create a standalone site/blog first and try to get some traffic to it first. Then you can slowly divert some of the traffic to your forum and see how things work.

[tonibtb]

Thanks for the advice on starting the blog first. That sounds like a good idea. Any ideas on how I would go about having like a question and answer session on a blog, or is that even possible? :?: