A bit about me

I am tired of seeing webmasters just post things about there lame shit and talk about the same old thing. So I will make a post of a bit of my background and about my life just because I should of did this like the first time I posted but better late than never.

I am a 17 year old web developer. I make money from my projects but the word entrepreneur is a word with little or no meaning to me. I started getting in to making sites in about 2000-2001 with a Nintendo site. Just random stuff when the game cube was around. I was passionate but could never make a lot of profit do to mod-chip affiliate offers etc. I do enjoy hanging out with my friends. I make a living online to pay my car and other things I want. I recently [4-5 months ago] struck some luck with my proxy network. I have about 5 proxies which is bringing in about 57% of my income. So selling them is not an option, plus they are my babies. I also dabble in SEO for clients and effective link building campaigns and affiliate marketing and of course the awesome arbitrage. I like to think of myself pretty successful but I hate people who brag and lie about it. Seems pretty lame to me.

As for my growing up, I grew up with my father in 5th ward projects in Houston Texas. I then moved with my mother to go old Dallas Texas when I was about 13 since my father’s business was blowing up and he had no time for me. I like it here in Texas. Nice place.

I am a senior in high school, about to graduate this year. I am excited to get out on my own and make money off the internet for a year then move on to an Art school for graphic design or painting. Or I might just go to a University for my Business degree to be honest I have no idea. I have a wonderful girlfriend and I smoke a lot of weed (If your a reader from Wicked Fire I have some pretty good threads ‘Weed Porn’.) And that’s about it. Everything else is pretty boring about me.

Any questions ask.

5 easy ways to have a successful forum

As we all know from experience if you have ever attempted to run or get a forum started there seems no easy way to get things going in the right directions and most experience a drought of activity and a slow first two months of running one. So I complied a list of good practices and tips to use when starting a forum and getting things to where they need to be.

1) During the first month(s) do not have ads! Most of the time the first few months of a forum are very important. Ad’s dis attract users for joining and having annoying affiliate offers and others just get the forum off to looking cluttered and over all not very appealing. Instead run private advertisers on a side bar when you start seeing an increase in traffic or getting more and more users. Also, I find it is best to wait a month or two to wait for Alexa and pagerank updates since you can step up your link prices with theses factors and allows you to make more money.

2) Paid Posting, Embrace it! Honestly paid posting is a gift from god as far as I am concerned. Organic visitors seeing a influx of posts and topics more often than not end up joining when others are engaging in insightful discussions. Forum Shock is a good way to get your forum going. I am using Bryan’s service mainly because it’s the best of it’s kind and helped me a lot and probably the best I have used. It also sounds a bit sad but would you join a forum with no activity? It seems lames since most don’t want to be the only one posting and discussing.

3) Promote you dick! I see to many people bitch and complain about how hard it is to buy advertising and get good results with a little amount of money. Well shut the hell up. I usually promote all of my forums with just word of mouth, signature links, advertising topics on competitive forums, buying cheap text links, and link exchanges. All that being said it should only cost you a minimal amount of cash ($40) and you can get your forum out to a great start. No need for huge advertising packages on big name forums, just buy some cheap text links or hell by all means link exchange!!!! that’s free advertising right there and gives you relevant traffic.

4) Custom Skin is the only way, or at least improvements to the default. Come on guys are you really that cheap? I see so many webmasters getting non unique and cheap looking skins and that is only a reflection of the quality of the forum. Now, I am not against paid skins but custom nice looking skins always produce the best results. It gives the members a feeling that the Admin is actually trying to go somewhere and is going out of his pocket to make the forum more appealing and just plain old looking good for the members. Now, I know what your thinkings ‘It’s not always about the design, some of us can’t afford a skin!’ Well I can point you to a few guys willing to do a custom skin for $20-50 just check out digital point. Lots of users there filling to go under market valve to get some portfolio work or just some cash. Your not going to get the quality of say a $200 skin but you will get something decent and worth while.

5) Paid Software is not always the way! I am so tired of theses ‘Forum Gurus’ telling people that a paid forum software is the only way to create a successful forum and that is bullshit. I can name a dozen forums running on phpbb or punbb and has more users that many paid options. Most forum users don’t care what software your using. For example. Mybb is some great software and is free and offers so many updates and there always releasing mods and secruity patches and that is a great way to cut down cost of a forum is to choose a free or cheaper option for software. Not everything paid is good.

And there you have it, a true guide to making a successful forum. Eat it Guru faggots.

Why WordPress.com? And some updates..

I see a lot of people making blogs and hosting them on there own servers. But, why? WordPress.com is an excellent way to have your blog hosted and quickly indexed in google and any other search engine.

I say on bandwidth, and hosting charges. I am still able to edit my css, and change layouts and even host a domain [I have yet too]. I am just curious why people host there own blogs when free and awesome services like this are available with out an invite now. Recently wordpress.com accouned the new digg button for blogs. Honestly, this is freaking awesome. Now I just have to add a simple code to get my digg code in and I am set.

Now for some news.

• My new forum development
• New sites
• Where the hell have I been?

My new forum development
My new forum progress is honestly, slow. I have the logo complete thanks to Lewis, I still have yet to catch him online to pay him. And, I am in the process of designing the layout for the forum myself to save money and get exactly what I want and how I want it structured. I will probably code it and have a friend look it over. Marketing is still in the works. I am thinking about adbrite to use to buy some text links and banner ads to improve traffic and get things started.

New sites?
I am still looking to purchase some excellent small sites. I have been looking around digital point for small celebrity sites, or just blogs that are making something decent. I just want to expanded my portfolio of sites really.

Where the hell have I been?
I am actually really sorry for not being online as much as I should. I apologize to any clients and anyone else for my leave. I have just been busy with my girlfriend, school and trying to get everything done in my social life and then come online and work. I have also noticed a decrease in profit on a few of my proxies. I am quite upset and I think my sites got smart priced since I was getting $.35-$.60 a click. Sad to see such potential and profit lowering to $.10-$.20.

Making money, the easy way.

I see a lot of web developers, webmaster what ever you like to call them bitch and complain about not making enough money with there [sometimes] unique projects and deciding to sell them off and under cut themselves and ultimately feel defeated in the process.

Well, I have a solution to all of your problems to make money and make it well. It is quite simple. Don’t give up. I am sure looking at your ad sense stats and seeing ‘$0.45′ can make one feel defeated when you continually are adding new and unique content say to a blog and you are still getting low CTR or people just aren’t that interested in your article to even read it, or your not getting any traffic at all. You have to keep pushing through offer better content that is the secret to making money online. It is all about content, that is what the search engines like, and same with most users. They come to your sites to get information they can’t get anywhere else. Just remember that. Remember to think like the user and how you would get the content or how would you see the site? Loaded with a lot of ads? Or affiliate ads offering a good service to your members?

Just something to think about.