Monetize Pro

We bought a new website this week! It is a quite big xbox 360 forum! The forum has more than 110,000 posts and over 1,500 members. We don’t own a xbox 360 yet, but maybe we will buy one now we got this forum, that way we can participate on it easier

Maybe we are lucky and can even win a brand new xbox 360 elite from the contest john cow is running! He is giving this xbox 360 away through a lottery he will hold on the end of April! The contest is proudly sponsored by Top Hosting Center “webhosting solutions for you and your business”. GTA 4 will come with the xbox if you win it.

The forum is not monetized at the moment! This is something we are going to change, but not that it will be irritating the forum members! We will update you here how we are going to monetize this xbox 360 community! The first goal is to make $1500 a month from it at the end of 2008!

Popularity: 17% [?]

Today we got a new dedicated server! Currently we are running our sites on 3 different places all over the web, which is not very organized at all. This server is not from a major hosting company and will be managed by a friend. In the upcoming days we will transfer all sites to our new server and if everything goes right there will be no down time at all!

This server is very big and there is room left for others to take some space, so if you need some at very cheap rates, you can contact us!

Popularity: 5% [?]

Our friend David recently made a post about the negative things of starting a site from scratch. He stated that the valueble sites in his network were all bought in an earlier stage and that creating new sites from scratch take to much time and money!

We have to agree at some points with David about this. Starting new sites from scratch takes indeed a lot of time and money if you want to promote it and get the word out! We also bought sites in the past (like this technology forum) and are always looking for new sites to purchase. But, starting a new site from scratch about a topic that you are very passionate about can be a good thing! You are in charge from the start and know every detail of the site! It might be hard to get traffic at the beginning, but if you keep building links and do some basic search engine optimization on it, it has to work

Recently we sold one of our own made sites, started from scratch, for the most we have ever sold a site before, so the hard work, time and money does pay off if you do it right!

David also stated that if you see a good site and are interested in it, just mail the owner of the site with the question if it is for sale! I never did this before but it looks like it’s working, as David bought 2 sites this way before! Something we are going to try to from now on

Popularity: 5% [?]

Today we worked on our technology forum. This forum will not only discuss topics related to tech, but also will cover all the topics general webmaster forums do. It got an upgraded version of vBulletin, from 3.6.4 to the latest, 3.6.9! It also got a new theme, hope you guys like it.

Our goals for this forum is getting it under 200k alexa as soon as possible and get 5000 posts by the end of May! If you need a place to share your thoughts on several webmaster/technology topics, feel free to join and discuss it with the community.

Currently the forum is not monetized but will be if it is more popular. The plan is to sell banners on top of the forum to private advertisers and get small banners under every first post. Maybe a paid membership subscription, but we are not sure about that yet.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Are you sure that your website visitors understand the text on your web pages? If your web pages are difficult to understand, you might not earn as much as you could with your website.

The readability of your web pages influences your sales

Many websites use technical language that is very difficult to understand for the average web surfer. In addition, some webmasters like long and complicated sentences. Long and complicated sentences are not a sign of professionalism. They just show that the author of the sentences doesn’t care about the readers.

The more complicated the text on your web pages, the more likely it is that a web surfer leaves your website. Web surfers are impatient people. If they have to labor to understand your web pages, web surfers will go away to find an easier site than yours.

How to check the readability of your web pages

There is an official standard that you can use to specify the readability of your web pages. The Flesch Reading Ease test is a United States governmental standard to determine how easy a text is to read. It measures the approximate level of education necessary to understand the web page content. Higher scores indicate that the text is easier to read, and lower numbers mark harder-to-read texts.

Make sure that your web pages are easy to understand. Do not require too much work from your website visitors. Make it easy to understand your web pages, make it easy to navigate them, make it easy to buy on your website. The easier your website is to use, the more you will sell.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Lately we have been looking to invest a percent of our earned money online. We all know the famous line: “Don’t work for your money, let the money work for you“, and we agree with that! Currently we are browsing popular marketplaces like the one at SitePoint on a daily basis. Unfortunately we can’t browse Digital Point’s marketplace any longer because of a temporary ban (oops).

There are also other investment options which we are checking out lately, such as stocks and mutual funds. We will keep you updated about our investments and if we are making profit from it or a loss.

Popularity: 6% [?]