Making Cash Money from Websites

December 18, 2010 By Fat Tony69 2 Comments

Between working on the new skin for The Best Forum Ever which is based around XenForo (I’ve mentioned this on my Future of my Forums post) and trying to win domain names from Namecheap’s contest, I’ve been reading a lot of blogs in order to learn more. I’ve read quite a lot of make money online blogs and the such. Now normally I don’t do this, but this post intrigued me quite a lot. I happened to read a post from Chris Guthrie’s Make Money on the Internet blog.

Before I get into the article, I wanted to throw in a bit of background information. If you read my Future of Forums post, you would know how I got from Geezer Gamers to Gamingvidz on 12-17-2005. Anyway, Gamingvidz was owned by this famous Halo player, TheHaloGod. From that, I worked my way up in the site and ended up helping TheHaloGod with his other forums such as Haloboards.com and Adobechat.com. Eventually those sites died out and my site grew. Well, over time I ended up finding out that Chris Guthrie was TheHaloGod. At this time, he was employed by Microsoft and was blogging off of ChrisGuthrie.net. That was about 3 years ago

That brings me to what I read. Some-what recently, Chris changed his blog from Chrisguthrie.net to Make Money on the Internet. In that time, he was fired from his job (despite doing a fantastic job), decided to work for himself full time on the internet, and all this other stuff. I am not trying to get into his whole life story as his blog gets into that. I want to talk about his most recent article.

Chris wrote about How to Sell a Website for Six Figures. Now, I was very interested in this as I’ve known Chris for some time and we have discussed websites a few times. Every we do speak, he always tells me to get into blogs and such and away from forums. Now, while I agree, he took the wrong approach for forums. Either way, I remember when he first started Netbook Reviews. He told me he got this amazing domain name and he will do this. Since then, he sold it for a good amount of money. This is amazing. He went from making $60,000 a year to over $150,000 this year. Of course he isn’t allowed to say what he made, but the fact he made six figures is ridiculous. From playing Halo and running a forum to making XXX,XXX (imagine all those 0′s).

What does this have to do with me?

This inspired me. He worked hard and it paid off. Plus, he networked with what started as just in Social Media. Unlike Chris, I am going to keep my forums. Now, I don’t plan on devoting my time on the forums, I care about my community. You need to care about them. With that, I want to take advantage of my resources. I know how to make a website look sexy. I am full knowledge. I know how to run a website. I plan to open up my network of websites. I want to start making a living off of my websites. This is going to take hard work and initiative. Do you have it? I know I do. I will make my New Year Resolutions for all my sites and we will see how I do.

Future of My Forums

December 11, 2010 By Fat Tony69 1 Comment

History of my Forums

Lately, I have been thinking more and more about my websites. The reason for this as when I first got into websites, I thought about them as a hobby and nothing more. Then again, when I first got into designing websites, I was very young and money wasn’t an issue. Out of this came a lot of insight into the internet. I learned a lot very quickly and used that knowledge to the best of my abilities. My first site (technically) was one made out of Microsoft Frontpage. This was long before I realized how much work it was a website. Although, after some issues, I left the computer and tried other things in my life – mainly sports.

As I got older, I appreciated the computer again and became active on the internet because of gaming. The reason behind this as I wanted to enhance my gaming. I wanted to get better at Halo 2 at the time and was also looking for steady people to play with. With this, I found a new niche I’ve never experienced before, forums. I first went on Geezer Gamers and due to the age difference and how our interests changed over time, I moved on to Gamingvidz.

The popular communities helped mold my decision that I wanted to create my own community. The reason behind this is the fact I became close the community and saw areas to improve. Naturally, I attempted to do work on these sites, but the administrators became very difficult to work with (Ironically, I became the same way, but if someone gave me ideas – I’d listen). Although, with much work – I became staff. With that, I started a name for myself using photoshop as my guide. I branched out onto many different forums gaining access to their staff. What I didn’t realize until one discussion, I didn’t really have any power as staff which was the opposite of my intentions. At one point, I thought I had an opportunity to go good as I became head staff and eventually an administrator, but as I quickly learned: Nothing is good unless you own the site.

What I Learned

I learned a lot over those few years as you can tell. You need to have your own forums to actually make progress with them (as well as a lot of other traits). It takes a lot to own forums and such and I will go into detail through out this blog and such…

About My Forums Now.

So I currently own The Best Forum Ever. I’ve had it for two and a half years as of the 15th of December. It doesn’t feel like such a long time, but it has been. Lately, I haven’t focused much on my forum as I thought it was fine by itself. I was incorrect. Despite the fact that my forum is two and half years old, has 24,704 threads, 386,786 posts,and 5,340 members, a dedicated staff, the total traffic went down 30% compared to last year. Also, I haven’t made any money since I updated the skin which was quite a while ago. All that said, I am making a change. I am starting to become more and more into my websites as it is what I enjoy. I love making websites and doing for others. I love my community and wouldn’t change it for the world. I have even been asked many times to sell out. I always refuse despite the amount of money they offer. Call me stupid, but I am dedicated to my board.

My plans with the board is to completely upgrade it. I’ve noticed lately that the forum has been acting a bit sluggish and I know for a fact it isn’t my host or my internet connection. I have realized that this is because of three reasons:

My board isn’t optimized any more (this is the sense that I’ve done all that I can based on what I’ve learned from a lot of tutorials and personal help)
My vBulletin is quite outdated. I am running the 3.8 series. The current vBulletin is 4.1. I would update, but the current vBulletin is very bloated, flawed, and full of problems. Also, the look of it isn’t quite what I expected and in my eyes quite ugly. Even if I were update, I would need a whole new skin and my current person refuses to work with it because of how problematic it can be as with each new update, the skin breaks.
My plugins have become too much. At one point or another, they were all useful and great. They improved my forum tremendously, but like anything, my forum evolved and grew. The average member age has increased a bit. With that, the once useful plugins aren’t so useful anymore.

I also have to figure out how to bring back traffic. I’ve never kept secret my method of traffic because of the sheer fact it is common sense. I do understand there are many ways to get your name out there, but I don’t partake in those methods. It is funny because when I first started getting big, I would have at least ten instant messages a day asking how I did it and how I can help them. To each of those people, I said the same thing: My only way of advertisement is WORD OF MOUTH. This is really the only way I have ever actually received traffic. Now, when I say word of mouth, there is a little more to just going to your friends in school and telling them, but once again, that is for another post and if you keep reading my blog, you will learn that.

What I Am Going to Change

Traffic

As I stated before, traffic is down a whole 30% from last year. I can not stand for that which is why I am doing all of this change. I hate the fact my forum isn’t as popular. I must admit, the only upside about it is the whole community is like a family. While this is great and all, a family only stays together for so long. I want to stay for a long time and to do that, I need more active members. So, what I plan to do is a few things.

I don’t have much money, yet, but a few member contests is always good. Even if it isn’t for monetary value, a VIP membership always works or a title and/or trophy.
Get the community together in a few projects such as an all day post-a-thon where they rack up spam posts in order to gain a title.
Email all the members. I do have over 5,000 members and many of them did enjoy the site at one point or another. Why not remind them that The Best Forum Ever is still around and being updated.
Ask some of my Administrator friends and other friends to help announce my re-opening (I don’t know what to call it).

As for Plugins

I am getting rid of almost all the plugins. Over the last few years, I learned that while plugins may be nice and all, most people don’t really use them for the most part unless they are fully integrated. Once again, I will write more about this as I can go on and on about these subjects. Basically what I am going to do is remove almost all plugins from my website. At one point, I was running everything including a whole point system, arcade with a ton of games, and a ton of other shit. For the updated version, I am going to use a few template edits to make everything look good such as drop-downs and anything else I feel that is needed. SEO plugins will definitely be added. I got to keep my Search Engine Optimization to the max. Finally, I will add any anti-spam plugins that I feel that is needed. It is such a huge issue. Anything else will be based on a case-by-case basis. I want to keep it as close to the original script as possible.

The Script and Skin

This is the main part of my issue. First off, I want to say that the script and the skin come hand in hand as they relate immensely. Anyways, I thought long and hard about this and how everything would work out. Lately, I’ve watched Internet Brands go down the tubes (not go out of business) with their latest version of vBulletin. Now, I am not saying it is terrible because how can a company release complete shit after they raised their price and all…right. Many would disagree with that statement, but that is neither here nor there. Either way, I learned about a new forum script (which at the time when I learned about it, it was unreleased) that was made by ex-lead developer, Kier Darby and ex-vbulletin developer, Mike Sullivan to create XenForo along with the help of ex-Jelsoft business manager, Ashley Busby as their business manager. For those who live under a rock or don’t know much about forum software, vBulletin (well technically Internet Brands) is suing XenForo over allegedly did the following:

“The suit is simple, the post from vBulletin reads. “We claim that Kier, Mike, and Ashley have infringed and violated contracts they signed with us to gain unfair business advantage. As such, Xenforo’s software unfairly stands on the shoulders of more than a decade of development by Jelsoft. Internet Brands owns this intellectual property.”

I do not believe a word of this, but I don’t know all the facts besides what I’ve read and I felt it was a bit odd as the lawsuit came a day before XenForo released their software for beta. Fishy if you ask me, but I am not one to pre-judge.

Lawsuit from vBulletin’s point of view

Lawsuit from XenForo’s point of view

Information/Discussion found on Google about XenForo vs. vBulletin

Information/Discussion found on Google about vBulletin vs XenForo

Either way, lawsuit or not, I bought XenForo. Originally, I bought it for a totally new project that I’ve had in the works, but as I played with XenForo more and more, I started to love it. I first fell in love with it on their official site where it was the only place to use it since it was an unreleased beta, but after having it in my hands, I knew it was correct for me. It was a culmination of the realization that I really don’t need any modifications anymore along with finding out the modifications I truly rely on are being made or already made. I would also need a custom skin as I do not settle for any less, but as for now, I can always customize a free script to make it my own. That is how The Best Forum Ever actually started. Then, I got a free one from my friend Vince for helping him out. Unknowingly to me, that was ripped and is found on vBulletin warez sites if you want it.

As for the script itself, it is still in beta. At first, I was absolutely reluctant to even think about converting The Best Forum Ever to a beta script especially one that had bugs (which was expected…it is beta). Now, XenForo is in Beta 5 and I am considering about making The Best Forum Ever a XenForo forum by new years. Now, before you say to yourself that it is still a beta, what are you doing? I realize that and how close it is before RC version and Gold version appear, but the time it took to go from Beta 4 to Beta 5 was about a week…give or take a day since I am not on top of it. That is a HUGE difference compared to the other betas. This means that there are hardly any bugs and nothing I really have to worry about. If I do, it will be fixed and I don’t have to do much modifying to make it all work. If they want their blogs back or want a blog or I want a homepage CMS/blog, I can always install WordPress MU and it would link to XenForo since there is a modification for it.

Speed is an issue as I’ve mentioned before, this is all the proof I need that XenForo is much better than vBulletin: Server Load VB > XF & Joomla – Proof Is Everything. I know that everything will be much better on XenForo speed and loading wise seeing the huge differences.

Plus, I recently read this comment on my forums:

“If I could like that I would. We need an effing like button on here.”

I realized after playing with XenForo, you would know there isn’t a traditional reputation system, but a like system similar to Facebook. My staff knew this as I opened a beta version of XenForo to them. By the way, my staff was ecstatic about it and absolutely LOVED it with the exception of one member. Having all of this go through my head, I knew it was time to move my forums.

What Now?

As you may realize, there is 20 days left in the year. In these 20 days, I plan to move The Best forum Ever over to XenForo with a skin ready and everything setup. Since I don’t have the plugins to really worry about, I have everything going pretty easy. I’ve found a lovely skin that I plan on customizing. Here is the essential breakdown on what I have to do.

Download XenForo
Download the Skin
Edit the Skin to make it look nice
Fix the forum setup on vBulletin now to make it all ready for XenForo
Install XenForo plugins that only deal with SEO/Anti-Spam
Set up all the settings and stuff beforehand
Clean out the server from all the junk and useless shit
Back up the database
Immediately after turn off the forum
Upload the files
Transfer over the database
Clean everything up
Open

I may be missing a few steps (including the get traffic parts), but that is the gist of everything. My goal…before or RIGHT after New Years. I let my forum down with TBFE v3 and this is to make up for it. This time around, I don’t plan to hype it up. The staff know I am working on it, but no details…that is until they read this blog post/twitter message I posted. We shall see!

After this…Bundiez Network and Steal the Internet!

PS. Hope you like the new theme. I refused to blog until I had a new one because I was stubborn/bored/loved this skin too much.

PPS. Here is a picture of The Best Forum Ever currently so I don’t forget to take one so I am able to do a comparison. Also is a picture of The Best Forum Ever when I first opened. Notice how I had no idea to take a proper screenshot back then.

Old – > New ->

How Easy is it to Blog?

November 21, 2010 By Fat Tony69 Leave a Comment

I’ve always wondered how hard is it to blog and make money. Oddly enough, I consider myself a blogger, but I really never made any money from blogging. Then again, I haven’t put much effort into blogging ever. I tend to do well, but then get a period of time where I am just busy as I have things to do such as hang out with my friends. Simple things like that keep me away from the computer and I am never thrilled about it. Either way, this blog post actually isn’t about me at all.

A few months ago, my aunt came to me asking for a website. The whole idea stemmed from recently losing her job like many, but unlike those many, she decided to do something about the situation. This is where she came in asking me for a website. I won’t lie, I was hesitant about making a website for her. There are a lot of factors to the website. Many of these factors I, myself, have not even stepped foot in, let alone conquered. Originally, I told her everything. I wasn’t about to dedicate my time until she understood everything I was going to tell her. My aunt and her friend Gail were very open to all I had to said and were ready to learn.

I must say, I was amazed by their drive to learn.

The Start

I am not going to exaggerate on anything in this article because that would just taint this article. Before they even started the website, I talked with them for about 10+ hours preparing everything. This talking session included everything.

Domain name
Idea
Logo
Slogan
Traffic
Ideas
Everything.

This is some of the issues discussed. Did I mention that my aunt and her friend knew hardly anything about their computers. I wasn’t sure they knew how to turn on the laptops without the stickers guiding them to everything. I was in for a treat! OH BOY!

The Steps Discussed

The first thing I asked my aunt was what did she want. This turned out to be quite a question as she wasn’t able to answer appropriately and completely. Knowing the internet very well and all the blogs out there, I was wondering what type of blog they decided to run. After showing them all types of websites from http://bunziez.com to http://makemoneyontheinternet.com to http://netbookreviews.com to http://johnchow.com and everything in between. The reason these sites were chosen is because they are all different types of blogs to choose from. After setting on the fact that my aunt wants to make money, but more importantly share her stories and ideas, she should do a combination of the same.

After deciding that she was ready for the blog world and the type of blog she wants to create, the name was an issue. I wish I could write out the major humor in this, but I can only try to explain this. My aunt spent all day bouncing names off of my family and I. Every type of name possible. At one point when I was in another room, she thought of a name and felt as if it was perfect. That was until I heard it and thought of high-priced escorts or prostitutes. So after bouncing names for a bit longer, they came up with: http://www.unemployedwoman.com/

It was like magic from there. I personally came up with the design of the site. Using Studiopress, I was able to make it look awesome. That along with their amazing content, they were able to start a blog.

Now, you might not understand the triumph in this. The fact of this is that they went from barely understanding the blog, the internet, and computers at a whole. Marketing was a whole new terrain for them. Writing successful blog posts to make money is still taking them some time, but I must say, they are learning and if they can do it, you can too!

Check it out! http://www.unemployedwoman.com/

Check out their rap video. It is an interesting take in marketing!

David on Demand

June 21, 2010 By Fat Tony69 Leave a Comment

This is perhaps the funniest, most creative idea I have seen in a while. Check it out: David on Demand. It is about this guy, David Perez. All he wanted to do is go to the Advertising Festival in Cannes. Leo Burnett, the 9th largest advertising company in the world agreed to send him only on ONE CONDITION. He has to do anything you tell him. When I mean anything, he really means anything.

This is a tattoo someone tweeted him to get. It is the amazing fail whale that we all have been seeing more and more lately. He also added two random twitter users name that tweeted to get their name on there. That is pretty fucking intense. Not just intense but, pretty fucking intense. This guy has seriously gone above and beyond to go here. What is also amazing is we get to watch every bit of it here David on Demand. Truly amazing. If you follow me on twitter, you will notice I have been tweeting a lot to him and yes, he has done most of it including giving a shout out to my forum, The Best Forum Ever! So, I definitely suggest you check this out and give him a tweet. Don’t be upset if he doesn’t do it right away. A ton of people are doing it as well, so you might have to tweet it a few times, but eventually he will do it or a variation of it. This guy has taken twitter and social media to a new level!

As for me, I am going to continue watching him and see if he will tattoo Fat Tony69 and TheBestForumEver.com on him and if not, continue making himself look funny in Cannes. Check him out: David on Demand!

These Chicks Don’t Even Know the Name of My Blog

March 8, 2010 By Fat Tony69 Leave a Comment

I’ve always found that the first blog post is always the hardest. It outlines what your blog is about, what type of writer you are, and how you write. Ironically, this isn’t my first, first blog post on this blog, yet I am doing it once again and continue to have trouble writing it. Why? It is the fact that I’ve introduced myself for at least 6 times.

Now you might wonder, why the hell would I delete everything 5 times. Well, I had a great blog, but then it disappeared. Since then, I have slacked on my responsibility. Although, this time I refuse to slack because I like blogging. I might even go video blogging as well (but I don’t want to get ahead of myself yet)!

So let’s get this introduction out of the way because this same thing will be in the about me My name is Tony. I like lamp. My age is irrelevant due to the fact that I like to act based on my mood. Some days, I feel like a old shit and other days I like to act like an immature little shit. I am a fan of all sports such as ballroom dancing and curling. I love reading the news on websites that aren’t related to television networks. I loathe the word love unless talking about my family. My favorite language is English and my least favorite language is Spanish. I own a forum and it is The Best Forum Ever. Besides that, I will talk about my life later on in this blog. I need to keep you reading.

Since I got the introductions out of way, I might as well inform you as to what this blog is about. Well, I want to say everything, but unfortunately, I doubt I’ll ever talk about why the sky is blue, so I’m sorry to all those who care about that. What I will discuss are the random questions everyone is thinking, but never dared to ask out-loud. Along with my shenanigans, I will include professional topics such as what I’m interested in; social media, psychology of the Internet, trending topics, and all that other stuff that sounds so much fun. Besides that, I’m going to talk about random stuff.

Now we have all that out of the way, I can finally write all topics I’ve been collecting on my iPhone. You should see my notes app, it’s filled with things to write about. Also, I forgot to mention this, but I might as well include this now, but I love my iPhone. As you can tell, the theme of this blog is a recreation of the notes app on the iPhone. Ironically, this is where I originally wrote this blog post and where I plan to write most of them.

PS. Expect the worst and the best when reading this blog. ENJOY!

Yours,