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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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 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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I would like to have one day a week where I answer questions that readers have asked me.  If you have a question on any topic, email it to admin at mooneyquest dot com and I will do some research and give you a proper answer.  Each Friday I will post the answers to at least one question which I have received.  I hope to use this as a way to give back to the community.  I know that starting to make money online is tough, and that there are a lot of blogs that say how much they make, but won’t help you make the money.  Shoot me your questions and I will give you my best answer.

Stay tuned tomorrow for part 1 of a 3 part series on how to start your own forums.

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As most of you know, my goals for my online earnings are set quite high.  $600,000 is a lot of money to earn, and it will take a long time to do so.  I thought I would share some of my plans to earn money towards the airplane.  I hope to launch some of these plans when my exams are finished April 24th.

Forums - Most people will tell you right off the bat that forums are a crap way of making money online.  In part, I’ll agree, you will not make money any time soon when you launch your forum.  The click-through-rate on them are usually horrible and without major traffic, you won’t earn a lot.  Before I start making forums sound like a bad idea, you should also know that there are a lot of forums around banking some major cash.  I have a friend who works for some popular forums, earning over $500,000 a year.  Forums tend to make better money off private advertisers / sponsors than they will off of AdSense.

My plan is to launch 3 forums by September, with hopefully more in the horizon.  I’m going to allow for a few months in between each launch to allow time to dedicate to that forum to make it succeed.  Here are some of my forums which will launch this year:

• A Webmaster Forum - most people will tell you this is a saturated niche.  They are right, but I believe I have something which will make this forum stand out.  I also have quite a few people interested in making this forum succeed due to the fact that DigitalPoint sucks (more on that later) and they want a better forum to go to.
• An Aviation Forum - It fairly obvious that I’m interested in aviation.  I would really like to launch an aviation forum to suit the wide range of aviation topics.  I know there are a few forums specific to pilot jobs, but not much in the range of general aviation.  I believe that this is a niche which will earn a lot of money.
• A Detailing Forum - Detailing is a hobby of mine which I enjoy.  During the summer I like to keep my car in pristine shape, and I would like to start a forum about this.  I would likely earn money through this forum with the detailing stores sponsorships and affiliate links.

Other ways to make money:

• This Blog - I’m hoping to get this blog earning $500 a month by the end of the year.  I think this blog will be successful due to the aviation twist I’ve added to it, something that no other bloggers done as far as I can see.
• Proxies - I might be tempted to start up my proxies again.  I was earning $400-500 a month last year with them, what can it hurt to get theme up and running again.  Its only more money in my pocket.
• eBooks - I’ve earned quite a bit off eBooks in the past, I’m hoping I’ll think up a topic for a new one since each eBook I release earns me an average of $600.

If anyone is interested in any of these ideas, more specifically the forums, let me know.  Any help would be appreciated, I think we would be able to make some great communities.

Sorry for the semi-self centered post.  I started exams today and this is really all I could think of, I won’t be online much for the next week but I’ll try to post as often as possible.

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Back in November a few friends and I had the idea for a contest. This would be a money-making challenge where we try and earn $15,000 in 6 months. The challenge started off fairly well, but I had to stop because of school and while I still earned some money online, it died once a few of us stopped participating.

I believe that a challenge like this would be great for a few reasons. I know a lot of people that want to make money online, myself being one of them. Quite often people get on these goals to make a whole lot of money very fast and fail to set realistic goals. I know my Mooney aircraft won’t be here in a year, its going to take years of work before I ever get to place that order. $15,000 in six months is a goal that I’m sure I could easily meet if I work hard to achieve it.

A challenge like this would be a great way to gain publicity for my blog, and the other participants blogs. It would also be a great way to network. I’d love to hear your opinions on this and if possible, plan to launch this competition on April 25th.

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As many of you know, there is a lot of quick money to be made online. Proxies, MFA sites, content writing, etc can earn you some decent money for a short while. There are other ways of making a very nice long term income online, and one of those is blogging.

JohnCow.com launched in July 2007 as a parody of JohnChow.com, and quickly became a very popular blog. It was obvious from the beginning that ‘The Cow’ was going to milk the blog for the money, but hey, thats what all of us are online for. The blog has earned a very modest income in the range of $2,500 a month, not including its sponsorships (a dedicated server and contest sponsorships), which the cow gets for free because of his fame.

The auction launched this morning on SitePoint with a starting price of $25,000 and a BIN of $50,000 (10 and 20 months revenue respectively). In only 10 months, John Cow has created a blog earning $30,000 a year, thats above the average income in many countries, just by posting an article once a day. You can read todays post with his reasons for selling.

Does this mean I would put in a bid on the blog? No way, at least I wouldn’t! Could you imagine the blog you could make if you had $25,000, even $5,000 to spend. I think that buying a ready to go blog would be a very poor idea. You could buy a premium domain, have a custom theme made, and market your site like crazy for far less the price of JohnCow.com.

I wish John Cow the best of luck selling his blog, I’m sure the site will receive some bids, but I certainly won’t be bidding on it. Now I just have to make sure my blog hits that level =D

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Over the past few months, I’ve written 4 eBooks on proxies which have earned over $4000. I think that it would be nice to share some of these secrets with my new readers. I’m going to try and condense the basics of proxies down into this one post, so don’t mind me if I’m being a bit general on the subject.

Domains: Picking a quality proxy domain is very important. You can register a domain at Godaddy or NameCheap. I prefer NameCheap because they give you WHOISguard for free. Avoid proxy domains with the words myspace, facebook or proxy in it, the filters and firewalls will block these sites faster. Make sure your domain is a .com as you will retain more of the type-in traffic as opposed to a .info which will receive hardly any. Here is a list of names I use for my networks, fill in the _____ with a generic word and you’ve got your network domain names.

Unblock_______.com

Surf_______.com

Hidden______.com

Hide______.com

School______.com

Hosting: One thing many people fail to realize is that most hosts such such as Godaddy, Hostgator, etc do not allow proxies to be used on their servers. If they catch you, they will shut off your hosting. For quality proxy hosting, I recommend www.Hagiohost.com. They offer 3 different proxy packages. I recommend that you start off with their cheapest one and move up as your needs change.

Picking a Proxy Template:

Picking a proxy template is fairly easy. First I’m assuming you will be using the PHProxy script, which I believe is one of the best proxy scripts available. Check out www.freeproxytemplates.com or www.sourcustoms.com. Sour Customs has some very nice templates that will cost you $5, but free proxy templates has lower quality templates that are free. If you can afford the $5, I consider it to be a great investment in having a good proxy.

Advertisers: You will earn money from your proxies by placing advertisers ads on your proxy. The two advertisers I recommend are Google Adsense and AdBrite. You should place Google AdSense ads on your proxies homepage and the AdBrite ads on your proxified pages. Please note, you may not place AdSense ads on your proxified pages or it will get your AdSense account banned. There are other publishers you can use, but these are the main two which I have used and earned upwards of $400 a month with.

Setting up your Proxy: You should now have bought a domain and hosting, downloaded a proxy template, and signed up and have been accepted to the 2 recommended advertisers. You can now setup your proxy by doing the following.

1. Set your hosting nameservers (eg. ns1.hagiohost.com) provided by your host in your domain control panel.

2. Setup your proxy by configuring the config file of the template which you downloaded. You will need your AdSense PUB-ID from your AdSense account. Your PUB-ID shows in the top right of any page once you are logged into your AdSense account. You will also need your AdBrite code. For instructions on how to install AdBrite, check out this tutorial.

3. Once the DNS has propagated (this may take up to 24 hours), upload your proxy files to your FTP server.

Your proxy should now show up when you go to your proxies domain. The next step is advertising your proxy.

Promoting your Proxy: Promoting your proxy is the best part of working your proxy. This is the part when you are going to get your visitors who will use your proxy and hopefully click on your advertisers ads, earning you money. The best way to advertise your proxy is using Google and Yahoo groups.

Google / Yahoo Groups: Advertising via Google and yahoo groups is easy. You will need to post lists of your proxies in the following groups 2-3 times a day for at least a week, then once a day afterwards. Doing this will allow bloggers to find your proxies and post them in their own blogs. This is the best way to gain backlinks and traffic to your proxy. Here is the list of groups you should advertise on:

http://groups.google.com/group/proxy-rank
http://groups.google.com/group/free-proxy-list
http://groups.google.com/group/Proxy-Web
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BLACK_PROXY/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/free-proxy-lists/ http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/free_proxys_list
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/proxy-sharing/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PROXY_PROXY/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bypass_filter_by_proxy/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/free-proxy-lists/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/khorramdin/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mygmproxy/

StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon is another decent way to get traffic sent to your proxy. I have a StumbleUpon bot which I will allow you access to, just subscribe to my RSS feed and I will email our the access url, username and password later tonight.

Other Advertising: There are other advertising methods which I will share with you in the future, remember to check back often for new advertising methods for your proxy.

I hope this information helps you start your own proxies. There is a lot of money to be made with them; I was earning approximately $400 a month earlier but my server went down and I never bothered to start them up again. I will certainly be doing that soon in an attempt to boost my earnings.

Notice:  If you liked this post and would like to share this information with friends, please link to them to this post.  Please don’t copy this post elsewhere.

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I write this post as a favor to a lot of you out there. I’ve read my fair share of eBooks when I first starting trying to make money online and the one thing I’ve learned is that eBooks are never worth it! DigitalPoint is becoming more croweded with eBook sales every day, I often take a look at the threads, but never buy them anymore. Here are some reasons you shouldn’t buy eBooks:

1. eBook Authors are Writing the eBooks to Make a Profit - If you had a method that was earning you a couple grand a month, would you write an eBook and sell your idea off to everyone on webmaster forums for $10 a copy, or would you work on your method, and hope to earn more money with your method. Thats right, I’m sure you would choose the latter. eBook authors are out there to make a profit, I guarantee you they are writing the eBook to earn themselves money, not “help share their methods with others” as they will claim to you. This is why people never earn the amount of money eBooks claim you will.

2. eBook Methods Become Saturated - I have seen a few good eBooks out there, one of which had to do with selling virtual items. The author suggested that you use adwords to advertise your virtual goods, and that since the keywords aren’t being used, you can get a CPC of $0.05. My friend tried this method out, once a few people (maybe 3-4) started trying this method out, their CPC had to be raised to upwards of $1 per click before they could restart their campaign. The same thing goes with 99% of methods out there. If an eBook tells you to do some trick to get affiliate leads, if you have 50 people trying the same trick, you will earn a lot less.

3. eBooks are Usually Time Consuming - In addition to the amount of time spent reading the eBook, people trying the methods in the eBook will usually spend a lot of time setting the method up. A proxy network which earns $1000+ a month will require a lot of work and advertising, certainly not 10 minutes a day. I read one eBook which claimed you could earn a lot of money very quickly, I got a review copy of the eBook and found out that you had to make your own videos to work the method.

On a final note, most eBooks which sell well are the ones that guarantee quick and easy income. While I think a quick buck is sometimes nice when you need money fast, I think everyone should start a few major projects in which they plan to keep working at for a long time. Remember, the more creative you can be, the more money you will earn. If you go and follow other peoples methods, I guarantee you won’t earn as much as you could if you thought of your own idea and stick to it until you succeed.

My advice to you is that if you get an idea and you believe in it, go with it, and work it until you succeed. I think a quote by Lord Chesterfield, a British Statesman would best suit the ending of this post.

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.

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