I returned from Florida late last night. I had a great vacation and would love to live where I stayed. Unfortunately, the internet connection there was horrible and I was unable to go online for more than a few minutes at a time before the connection would cut out again. I will be sending out the prizes for the contest this afternoon. Unfortunately, only 1/3 of the winners actually claimed their prizes. If you didn’t claim or didn’t win, don’t worry. There will be another contest soon to give out the leftover prizes plus some more prizes which I will get for you soon.

I’ve read a few posts on forums such as Blog Premiere asking about advice for starting a forum. For many people, starting a forum is confusing. In my opinion, starting a forum isn’t complicated, but it will require a lot of dedication and hard work to get started. I will be writing a three part series on how to start a forum. This guide will tell you everything you need to know to start your own forum. I am a vBulletin tech, so I have setup and modified many popular forums in the past. I am planning to start my very own forums soon, so I will be blogging on that shortly as well. This guide will start off with the basics and move onto the more important stuff in parts 2 and 3.

Picking out a domain for your forum:

One of the trickiest parts of starting a forum in my opinion is finding a good domain. With domainers picking up a lot of domains and holding them, this can be tricky. When you want to pick out a domain for your forum, I strongly recommend you get a .com domain, if you can’t get a .com domain, go for a .org domain. I’m planning a few forums, and found some very nice domains, but had to go with a .org domain. Don’t worry, .org domains generally do just find. Do not buy a .info, .in, or any other crappy TLD domain as you will be shooting yourself in the foot. You can buy your domains from GoDaddy, but I strongly recommend NameCheap as they offer free WHOISGuard protection.

I have a few domains I will always check first when I’m thinking of a forum name. First of all I always check the domain ending in forum/forums, such as AviationForum.com, or TechForums.com. Normally these will be taken buy you can always email the owner and see if he’s willing to sell (see next part). Then I move onto checking other domains that are short but suit the topic well. If you want to buy a domain for a forum, try checking for available domains in this list that would suit you.

www._________forum.com

www.——–forums.com

www.——–spot.com

www.——–central.com

www.total———.com

www.———zone.com

Basically, check your topic of the forum with a simple word at the end. Don’t try and make your name so fancy that its hard to spell or remember. Some of the domains I own include TechCentral.org, TotalAviation.org, WebmasterSpot.com and DetailersEdge.org. As you can see, all of these domains consist of 2 words and are easy to remember.

Domain taken? Attempting to buy an already owned domain.

Sometimes you will think of a domain that would be perfect for your forum. You check NameCheap to find that the domain is already taken and that there is no live site on that domain. At this point, I’d highly recommend you try and contact the current domain owner and see if he wants to sell the domain. To do this, visit Whois.sc and enter the domain which you want to buy. If the domain is not protected by WHOISGuard, it will bring up the owners contact information. Send him/her an email and hope that you can negotiate a good price.

A Word About Backordering Domains:

A while back I was talking to a friend about a domain I wanted to acquire. He told me I should backorder the domain with Godaddy.com for $19.99 so that I’d get it when it expired. I strongly advise you to not use Godaddy’s backorder system, you are very unlikely to get the domain that way. Basically, each registrar gets is allocated a certain number of servers to ping the ICANN database to try and catch the domain as they drop. You are much more likely to get the domain by backordering the domain with Pool.com for free (you pay $60 once you actually get the domain) or SnapNames.com These registrars have far more servers than Godaddy, and thus a better chance at getting you the domain. Remember, it is likely cheaper to try and contact the owner of the domain first as sometimes domains are registered and the owner will keep renewing them.

Stay tuned for part 2 of 4 which will talk your options for forum software and content management systems. I will also let you in on a great quality hosting deal.

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Afternoon guys, Jason from TUK, filling in for Reid because he’s on his arse somewhere in Florida. On vacation, actually.

Anyways, I’m going to keep this short, as I woke up a couple hours ago… but if you want to start making money online, you need to be organized.

Trust me, I didn’t think you needed to - heck, a few days ago my room was the messiest you’ll ever see, however I made it a point to clean stuff up and I’m a lot more productive for this.

By being organized, you can worry less about looking for things and whatnot and more about the object at hand - that is making bank. It’s no coincidence that since I’ve cleared up my room, I’ve been hitting $300 - $500 a day in earnings. And you should be too.

How do you get organized?

1) Neaten stuff up.

This is extremely hard if you’re a teenager, but take ten minutes a day, at the beginning of the day to neaten up. You don’t have to do your full room, but wherever you’re working - for example, I’m at my desk where my computer is, so I clear it (by clear it, I mean dump everything on the floor). This leaves place for other things, one of which is…

2) Keep a Notepad.

I always have ideas - sometimes I need to jot them down otherwise I’ll forget. I used to do this in MS Word, but it works a lot better if you actually write it down as it is more apt to stay in your memory as well as giving you the potential to expand (drawing spider webs, for example).

If you do not have a Notepad, go to the store and get one now and write all the ideas you have down… see what comes up. It’ll help.

As the common thought goes, time = money and you’ll save a lot more of the former (and thus make a lot more of the latter) if you organize yourself. So stop reading this post (but comment if you wish first, and read TUK too ) and get yourself cleaned up.

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Hey everyone,

I’m just getting a quick post in from the house I’m staying in.  The internet  connection is horrible so I will try to post soon, but it keeps cutting out.  Sorry about my lack of posting lately.  When I get a better connection, I will get posting.
Reid

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Hello MooneyQuest readers! I have volunteered to relieve Reid of his posting responsibilities for a day. He will be able to focus on enjoying his much deserved vacation!

Normally I am the primary content writer over at Big Ben Patton’s Place. I like to think that I can live up to the very large shoes which Reid has left empty for me today, so if you like what you read please stop by and say hello. I will also take this time to plug Big Ben Patton’s Contest Extravaganza. My sponsor’s have offered up over $2000.00 worth of wonderful prizes. Stop by today and check it out. You have nothing to lose and some pretty nice prizes to win!

Four Crucial Things You Need To Do To Build Your List:

Online marketing may have developed a sudden surge these past few years, but many in the know have felt its rise even from way before then. As more internet based businesses are put up, the need to develop new marketing skills and knowledge based on this new medium have arisen. More and more marketing strategies are being discovered and developed to cope with the changing face of business the business world.

The demand for online marketing tips and strategies have drastically grown and a new form of business has been born, internet marketing strategies. While there are companies that are all too eager to help your site and business build a clientèle for a fee, there also many ways that can spread the word about your sites subsistence in a more cost free way. One of these is Opt-in email marketing, also known as permission marketing.

Opt-in marketing requires the permission of a willing customer to subscribe to your marketing materials, materials that take form in newsletters, catalogs and promotional mailings via e-mail. The more opt-in marketing mail is sent, the more chances there is to bag sales and more sales. To do this, you must build a list of all those who wants to subscribe to your opt-in marketing list.

From your list, you will get your targeted customer, this is a good list since they already have shown interest in what you have to show and sell since they have willingly signed in for your list. These are the people who have liked what they have seen in your site and have decided they want to see more and maybe even purchase what ever product or service your company and site has to offer.

Many people would think that building their lists would take hard work and a lot of time to build and collect names and addresses. This is not so, it takes a bit of patience and some strategies but in doing this list, you open your site and your business to a whole new world of target market. Take the effort to take your business to a new level, if traffic increase and good profits are what you want, an opt-in list will do wonders for your business venture.

There are many sources and articles in the internet available for everyone to read and follow in building a list. Sometimes they may be confusing because there are so many and there different ways. Different groups of people would have different approaches in building an opt-in list, but no matter how diverse many methods are, there are always some crucial things to do to build your list. Here are four of them.

1) Put up a good web form in your site that immediately follows the end of your content. While some may say this is too soon to subscribe for a website visitors application, try to remember that your homepage should provide a quick good impression. If somehow a website visitor finds something that he or she doesn’t like and turns them off, they may just forget about signing up.

A good web form for subscribing to an opt-in list is not hard to do. Just write a simple short statement about how they would like to see more and get updated about the site. Then there should be an area where they could put in their names and e-mail address. This web form will automatically save and send you the data’s inputted. As more people sign in, your list will be growing.

2) As mentioned in the first tip, make your homepage very, very impressive. You need to have well written articles and descriptions of your site. Depending on what your site is all about, you need to capture your website visitor’s fancy. Make your site useful and very easy to use. Do not expect everyone to be tech savvy. Invest in having good programming in your site, make your graphics beautiful but don’t over do it.

Don’t waste your time making the homepage too overly large megabyte wise. Not all people have dedicated T1 connections, the faster your site gets loaded, the better. Go for a look that borders between simplicity and sophisticated knowledge.

3) Provide good service and products. A return customer is more likely to bring in more business. Even then and now, a satisfied customer will recommend a business always. Word of mouth and recommendations alone can rake in more business than an expensive ad. As your clientèle roster grows so shall your list. With more members on the list, the more people will get to know about what you have new to offer.

4) Keep a clean and private list. Never lose the trust your customers have entrusted you. If you provide e-mails to others and they get spammed, many will probably unsubscribe to you. Remember, a good reputation will drive in more traffic and subscribers as well as strengthen the loyalty of your customers.

If you can follow these tips you should be able to make your stake in the email opt in list marketing niche today. Enjoy.

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I’m proud to announce the winners of the first MooneyQuest contest.  We had an awesome turnout with 667 entries in total.  I will be posting more about the effects of the contest in a future post.  Now, onto the prizes.  I calculated the number of entries each person had and entered the email associated with the entries into random.org and did the draw.  There are 21 prizes, so I took the first 21 winners and matched them with the list of 21 prizes in the prize list from the original post.   Here are the winners.

 Now here are the winners matched with their prizes.

Please click the image to view it full size.

Thoughts from the contest:

I certainly thought this contest ran well.  For my next contest I will be changing a few things.  First of all I would like to run a longer contest, I believe a month would be a fair length.  Secondly, for the drawing, you can see this time some people won more than once.  I think for the next contest, a one prize per person limit should be setup to keep certain people from winning a lot of prizes.  Lastly, I hope I won’t be so busy during the next contest so that I will be able to post daily during it. 

Over all, I really thought the contest went smooth.  I would like to congradulate all the winners and thank everyone for participating.  I would like to send a special thanks out to the contest sponsors; this contest would have not been possible without your support.

On a side note, I am working on my first major project, I will be talking about that soon.  Secondly, I will be on vacation from the 10th to the 19th.  If anyone is interested in guest posting, please contact me.

Could all the winners please comment here to claim your prize within 7 days. Unclaimed prizes will be redrawn out to the people who entered.  I will email you the details!

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I first started making some decent money online back in November of last year.  I started to read some of the big name blogs such as John Chow, John Cow, Tyler Cruz, Shoemoney, etc.  I’d like to warn anyone that reads these blogs that reading them is a waste of your time!  They will not help you earn any money online!  Why’s that?

They are already making good money online - The bigname bloggers meantioned above are already making good money off there blogs.  Tyler Cruz is earning $1400+ a month from his blog alone while John Chow is earning over $30,000 a month from his blog.  They already have sites making very good money and have no need to post about there progress.

Their posts are hardly relevent - Lets take a look at JohnChow.com first.  If you read most of his posts, you will find paid reviews, posts about his dinners, and lots of stuff.  None of them will really tell you how to make money online.  As his header says, he makes money online by telling you how much money he makes.  Now lets look at Tyler Cruz, a fairly sucessful web entrepreneur.  He has over 1500 RSS subscribers but almost none of his posts will tell you how to make money online.  If you look at his most recent posts, you will see ones telling you how much money his blog is making, ones about his vacation and his server crash and even more paid reviews, but do any of them give beginners tips to make money online.  Again, the answer to that is no.  I could go on forever with this post talking about MMO blogs which won’t help the readers, but that would end up getting boring.

Why you should read newer blogs - I tend to subscribe to newer blogs such as The University Kid, The Net Fool, etc because they are newer to the MMO niche, yet they blog about their progress making money online.  These guys are the ones who will provide you with first hand information about making money online.  You can follow their successses and failures, while a big name blogger will only bloat about how much they are already making and not help out the reader.

With MooneyQuest, I will try and guide you guys to make money online.  I have written one major tutorial so far and will have many more to come with ways that you can make money online.

As for the contest, I will be tallying up the entries and picking the winners within the next day or so.  Stay tuned for the announcement of the winners.

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