Profit From an Online Community

By Stephen Bucaro

What if you could setup a website, then lay back and collect money while web users build your website for you? Surprisingly, there are many ways to do just that. Examples are websites that let users post classified ads, articles, links to ebooks, and message forums. This article focuses on starting and profiting from your own online community.

You could start a general topic online community, but it's better to focus on a specific topic. Some popular forum topics are: celebrity gossip, child rearing, relationships, free lancing, and home businesses. Having a specific topic gives website purpose, and attracts people interested in that topic.

Users like an online community because they can communicate even though they may be geographically separated, and they don't have to be online at same time. Newcomers can read past messages to catch up on conversation, and join in when they're ready.

An online forum is profitable to owner because they start out with a targeted audience and by monitoring message threads, owner can fine tune website's advertising to very specific interests of Community.

The most challenging part of starting an online forum is to attract people to community. you'll need to set up some threads and have some friends start discussions. People are attracted to a community that has a large number of active discussion threads.

After joining and participating for a while, members will tend to stay because they make acquaintances with other members. After community reaches a certain number of members, it will become self-sustaining without much effort on your part.

One decision you need to make is whether to provide synchronous or asynchronous communication. Synchronous communications, for example a "chat room", allows members to communicate in real-time. Of course, members have to be online simultaneously, and users with slow dial-up Internet connections will not be able to keep up with conversation.

Asynchronous communications, for example a "message board", means members leave messages that others can respond to later. With asynchronous communications, users will be able to put more thought into their messages before responding.

Some online communities provide both message boards and chat rooms. This allows individuals to break away from a message board thread and engage in their own real-time conversation.

Your online community can be moderated or unmoderated. In a moderated forum, before messages are posted they must be approved by a moderator to make sure that they conform with community's rules and policies. In an unmoderated forum, messages are posted directly by users without filtering.

There are several options between fully moderated and free-for-all totally unmoderated. For example, a new member's messages could be moderated for a short trial period, after which they would be allowed to post directly to forum.

When you begin writing for your home based business, never lose sight of following facts:

1. People notice things (sometimes even most minute detail) 2. People remember things (sometimes even most minute detail) 3. People love to point out mistakes (sometimes even most minute detail) 4. People will magnify minute details.

Some people enjoy finding errors and pointing them out, even to extent of writing books on subject. Other people (and I admit to being one) can’t help noticing errors and find them so horrific that they (inadvertently and quite without malice) magnify them out of all proportion.

When you write for public, you are poking your head above edge of literary trench and inviting them to pierce your brain with critical bullets. It is only sensible to take proper precautions. The tin helmet is not a great fashion accessory but, in these circumstances, much preferable to a baseball cap.

I used to work for a lawyer who had a selection of favourite words and phrases which he would drop into correspondence or conversation in order to impress people. These beauties included phrase "most busiest" (makes me grind my teeth), "at end of day" (yawn), "in essence" (used relentlessly to introduce any minor point) and "very unique" (why does a unique word have to be devalued in that way?).

The day arrived when he discovered "vociferously" and latched onto it as his new favourite word. After several trial outings, he obviously became comfortable with "vociferously" and introduced "vociferous". Eventually he was managing to use one of them in every letter and conversation. He wrote to other lawyers informing them that he wanted to work vociferously to an early conclusion of matter in hand. He told insurance companies that his clients’ losses would have been smaller if those companies had worked vociferously. He wrote to clients assuring them of his most vociferous attention at all times.

I didn’t understand why he thought it was a good idea for everybody to be shouting. When awful truth dawned on me, I cringed: I realised that he didn‘t actually know meaning of word. I never did find out exactly what he thought it meant. I could hardly ask him. That would have led to a conversation I did not want to join in. How much good do you think it would do your career to impart to your boss information that he appeared not know meaning of a word he used on a daily basis? Trust me on this: promotion would not come into it.