My Journey To Creating a Membership Site and Forum
As I have received a lot of help over the years from this amazing community, I wanted to take the time and put in writing my own journey to running a membership forum site. There are no affiliate links here and I'm not profiting in any way from this post. I merely want to take the time to share my lesson from the school of hard-knocks when it comes to membership sites, in the hopes to help some of you who are on the fence about running a forum. I also placed a link to a 10 minute Youtube video talking about what true freedom means to me (while driving in my car).
Pre-Research Work:
The research to find just the right forum software was a long, sometimes agonizing road, which took several years, lots of grey hair (okay, even loss of hair) - and I can guarantee you that had I known what a learning curve I was about to embark on by undertaking a membership site, I would not have taken on the journey. Ignorance is indeed bliss at times. Alas, here I am, proud of my accomplishment and deeply grateful for all of the generous assistance I have received from many of you along the journey. Just perhaps my insights received from my learning experience in hindsight can be helpful to some of you.
It's important that you know that I'm not the most technical person. I started off with a Blogger blog because Wordpress was just too much for me. After 2 years Blogger became too limiting and I made the jump to Wordpress, but had to hire someone to create it for me because of my technical lack of experience. After spending a small fortune I decided to just learn the darn thing. Now I have several websites run on Wordpress, I manage them myself today. But Wordpress became too limiting and the Wordpress membership site add-ons were just too ugly looking, needed too much reworking or were just volatile and vulnerable to spammers (not something I wanted to experience).
My Background - What I do:
I hold tele-seminars and teach others how to do the same. I'm a metaphysician, holistic life coach and my forum is in the field of metaphysics, spirituality and overall a personal development and self improvement forum, including spiritual businesses. It's important that you get clear with who your audience is and what your message is. The site of my name is Core Freedom because at my heart is for people to find freedom at their own core. This is why I also teach people how to integrate and make tele seminars a part of their business, no matter what their business is. Tele-seminars can be pre-recorded, turned into products in a jiffy and can be held from anywhere on the planet. This I teach via the forum as well. Everything I produce, everything I do, is for people to achieve freedom at their most sacred core. My forum reflects this and thus it attracts those kinds of people. You must know who you are because your essence will carry through to your forum and attract those who are just like you, or those that need to learn from you or have something to teach you. Don't under estimate this...
Within 2 months of launching the site the page rank went from non-existent to a PR4 site. Today it has dropped to a PR3 site, which I haven't quite figured out yet why.
Choice of Membership Site Software:
I personally researched almost every membership site on the market for a full 9 months, for hours each day, before making the final decision. I shed many tears in the process, no kidding. This by far, I would say, is one of the key ingredients to running a membership site. Not the tears, but the research. :-) I bought and/or downloaded most of what was available then, tried them all and returned all of them but one: Xenforo.
The reason I chose Xenforo was simple. As a metaphysician, hypnotist and intuitive (which is what my board is about), I looked into the past and future of vBulletin and plainly put I liked what I saw with Xenforo much better, even though there was a chance that their legal battle with vBulletin would have the power to shut them down. For those of you who are unaware, the original design team of vBulletin left to start Xenforo. It was a conscious decision to give my energy to the "XF guys" who were starting over, rather than the rich guys who only wanted to shut the "little guys" down for profit and market domination. I wanted to do my part in ensuring Xenforo's success and future. Besides that, Xenforo's user friendly forum software was an absolute no brainer. Their own forum was so intuitive, easy to navigate through and a mere pleasure to hang out in, that I wanted my users to have the same experience.
The admin panel of vBulletin was way too complicated, it felt clunky, unnecessarily so for my taste, whereas Xenforo's admin panel felt like something I could learn (with help that is). Today most of the Xenforo admin panel is handled by me, it's that easy, even I can handle it. :-)
The support Xenforo extends on their own forum for license holders is something we rarely see with any company. Period. I can post a support request and within literally 2-5 minutes someone in the community will respond with impeccable help, sometimes a staff member, sometimes another XF user. Please don't take this as a guarantee of how fast Xenforo staff responds, it just has been my experience that the community as a whole, including the entire Xenforo staff, has been utterly helpful and is working in collaboration with one another.
I've had my share of struggles with my forum and without Xenforo's awesome help I would have closed my doors a long time ago. For example, Brogan and Jake (both XF staff members), have extended the most amazing help by always being there. Other license holders like Matt, Borbole and Andrej have reached under my arms and pulled me out of some serious technical hick-ups. Matt and Borbole are my go-to guys when I have server nightmares. :-) Andrej, for example, is my go-to guy when I need changes made to the forum. Andrej does just about everything from upgrading, updating, tech support, header replacement, cosmetic fixes, and managing much of my admin panel. He's been in the XF forum from the beginning and is one of the nicest guys to help me with my forum. I trust him explicitly (another must-have when you run a forum). His website is, pleXineu - Setup, Configuration and all that's in between. and of course he's also on the XF forum. You can find Matt and Borbole there too.
Know What You Want From Your Forum - Think Long Term:
As I stated at the beginning, I started with a Blogger blog with a mere wish to keep an online diary, which turned into a Wordpress site on which I had Wishlist installed (a form of membership). For neither my Blogger blog nor my Wordpress site I really had any long term goals. Eventually, however, I wanted a two-way conversation between me and my readers. I found that with a blog I was doing 99.99% of the talking and the rest was in form of comments. Actual back and forth communication, however, is not really as easy with a blog or a website. Hence my wish for a forum where people could really immerse themselves into awesome discussions.
Most forums are known for people doing what I call a "hit and run" move. They visit once, vomit their opinion into the forum or register to access some information but overall the members have little to no interest in really building a community. Or worse, they're just there to drop their links for selfish reasons (something that is prevented with the Xenforo software, thank goodness). I experience virtually no spam. My forum is a mixture between a blog and a forum, hence we call it a Blorum. If you do a Blorum search on Google my forum should be between position 3-5 on the first page. I wanted long posts and long responses. I deeply care about the evolution of people's soul and my forum and our members reflect this. My goal was to build a community of equally caring individuals, balanced between mature men and women. So whatever your goal is for your forum, make it about YOU so that your passion for your forum will sustain you. Because sometimes you feel like you're running out of steam, so purpose is key.
Making Money With Your Forum:
Although my forum started as a continuation of my blog, which all started as a labor of love, eventually came the dilemma of "how do I make money with this thing." It's not something I was planning out at the beginning because my heart was in it, creating a forum was not a business decision, it was an act of love. While that maybe noble, it's really not a smart business move (ok, it's actually quite dumb). Heads up: eventually the cost of running your forum will catch up with you and there really is no reason not to make money with your forum. To some, making money with a membership site is their number one priority. To others like me, providing quality content and building community comes first, money follows automatically.
What I didn't know is that while I could have a little hosting account for my website, putting a forum on a little, shared hosting account is not that great of an idea. I ended up getting a server account and have help maintaining it (I'm just not technical enough to manage it myself). Support with this is key!
And this also means higher maintenance costs. So making money with the forum becomes a necessity. You may want to plan this from the beginning, rather than just falling into this trap like me. :-)
Today my forum provides me with several income streams, some passive, some active. Here are just some examples:
1. Various membership levels (monthly income)
2. Product income
3. Advertising income from allowing others to sponsor posts, etc. (note, I do not do Google ads and want to keep my forum ad-free)
4. Consulting income (from members and those who find the site)
5. Speaking opportunities (which result in more members, more one-on-one clients and more product sales)
6. Renting forum space**
Be Creative When Creating Your Forum:
**After the steep learning curve and almost giving up I decided that there must be others who are struggling with the same technical issues. So just like a hair salon owner rents out chairs in her salon to make her overall salon's rent at the end of the month, I too am renting out forum space within my community. I stumbled across this because a member asked for it.
My forum offers the entire technical platform to anyone who needs to reach an online community. And you want to set yours up the same way if you want to making money from renting forum space or creating various levels of memberships where members have higher permissions to certain areas, etc.. For example, our members can not only create long blog like posts, they can create signatures that lead back to their own site. We also have a Directory listing on our site where members can literally create an unlimited number of directory listings for the services they offer. We also have a marketplace/classified section where members can advertise their workshops, books, products, etc. And the newest add-on feature I am working on is creating a Resources page that allows members to create a Resource listing with downloadable files and products, with a "buy now" option and a rating ability for all site visitors to purchase their products directly from the site. This is also a place where clients can leave ratings and customer testimonials. All these features are available for upgraded members, yes, they pay to have these privileges.
In essence, anyone who does not want the technical hoopla of owning and managing their own site, having their own hosting account, and the overall dilemma of having to advertise, can rent platform space for probably less than having one consulting client per month. It's a win-win for everyone. Those who rent space in my community manage and moderate their own forum. We bring the clients and they provide the content and the material, they engage the members in conversation, run workshops, seminars, tele-seminars and more. We of course manage the technical aspects.
Keeping out Spammers - Membership Approval:
All of our members are manually approved. I only approve on average 1-3 new members per day, the software automatically rejects 100-150 per day, most of which are spammers. Quantity is not important to me, quality is hugely important to me.
Running a forum or a membership site does not have to be the same for everyone, you can make it as boring or creative as you want it to be. Let your own authenticity and your overall life purpose shine through your own forum.
Time To Travel the World:
One of the main reasons I wanted to diversify my speaking business onto an online platform was so that I could be truly free to live wherever I wanted to live and pick up and move at a moment's notice if I felt like it. I want to work when I am inspired to, as much or as little as I feel like it. I want the freedom to go learn a language by immersing myself in that culture and traveling to that country, all while running my online business. I want the nomadic, non-materialist life style. I had the big houses, the luxury cars, and it just got "old" and burdensome after a while. Over the past couple of years I've been to Canada, moved to Italy to learn Italian, moved to Switzerland to get my PhDs and just a few months ago moved to the U.S. where I am still traveling from State to State, trying to see where I fit. And yet, other countries are already calling again and no matter where I want to be, running a forum and teaching tele seminars allows me to do that no matter where I am in the world. This to me is true freedom. And you can have the same.
I hope this was a helpful post and if there is anything I left out, which I'm sure I have, just ask. I do my best to answer some questions.
Blessings to all!
Cha~zay
Edit, 3/30/13 - I decided to take a video (while driving) about what true freedom means to me. Enjoy. You can watch it here on Youtube.
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