How to re-born the an Active Community ?

[John Milton]

As ESM say, one of most important thing is an active "community"..... currently the forum is pretty desert, I admit this

But how to restart it better ?

I ask this because I can contact & invite by e-mail the 4100 member of the Forum + our 2000 Customer (more than 5000 Directory). To discover again the forum. But before do this, must for sure make some modification.

I have some idea :

- Make new category on forum like "Selling / Buying Directory" where customer can try sell there website (I know there is quite big business of reselling directory with little PR & regular income) if you have idea of new category, you're welcome to tell me

- Add Google AdSense banner like do "DigitalPoint", replacing the AdSense TAG ID with the ID of the bigger product supporter (calculated with the forum post, or forum thread starter)

- Add moderator...... but who is interested ? for free ? for cash ? in exchange of .... ?

- Make a bi-monthly newsletter to redirect all our member to a "Suggestion Post for IndexU Features / Improve / Bug Fix" and resulting with a "poll" the most important of them.

- Any other idea ?

[Bruceper]

I'd be interested in moderating. I don't know if you're the one who receives the spam notices but I've been reporting bunches of it lately. I'd be interested in templates in exchange for moderating

Make the forum for selling called the "IndexU Marketplace". That tells users it is a place to sell things, but only related to IndexU. They could sell directories, domains, databases etc. Strict rules on the number of posts, quality of posts and what can and can't be sold need to be in place before you add this.

Advertising on the forum - not necessary yet. Keep it free of ads until the userbase is larger. Allow moderators or forum supporters or leaders (another usergroup you can add instead of moderators) to have banners in their signatures.

Mailing list - Announce the forums only after you have added supporters/moderators and added a FAQ or improved other available resources.

When to do it all? Very soon. This way you can take advantage of the recent announcement of indexutemplates.com


Qualifications (is this a job interview?)
- Owner of pocketbikeforum.com (active forum, 1324 members, almost 13000 posts, two years old, running vbulletin, vbseo, a few plugins)
- Owner of UsenetGuide.com (a usenet provider, in business for 5 years)
- I also own 70+ domains and have worked from home for the last 6 years.
- IndexU unlimited license holder currently with eight active directories.

[inspireme]

the adshare idea is nice, will get people sticking around and allow them to be paid for contributing to make the forum active. Moderators... not sure why you need them unless it gets busy - will make sure a few people will stay faithful to the forum i guess, and allow others to delete spam

Definitely add a buy/sell forum, when you send the email around to everyone mention this, you may find a lot of people have abandoned sites they never considered selling. If you do get lots of people posting, add a thread on digitalpoint and see if you can get a few sales.

[John Milton]

Thanks for theses first suggestions, I hope to get more before make all I can do for this "Re-Born" Project

ESM : any suggestions please ?

[esm]

Thanks for theses first suggestions, I hope to get more before make all I can do for this "Re-Born" Project

ESM : any suggestions please ?

just figure out a way for you, zubby and dody to be involved in the forum for a while into the future. It will die without your involvement. I know because when I was almost the single person for INDEXU support for 3.2, folks still wanted dody.

[John Milton]

For Zubby : I'm still in negociation with him to make him agree to come back minimum 3 hours / week on forum...... I don't know what our customer make to him in past to make him so affraid to come back here

For Dody : Even me have trouble to get reaction from him since 1 month..... I really hope a reaction from him with real "post" an not only "fake post"

[esm]

For Zubby : I'm still in negociation with him to make him agree to come back minimum 3 hours / week on forum...... I don't know what our customer make to him in past to make him so affraid to come back here

For Dody : Even me have trouble to get reaction from him since 1 month..... I really hope a reaction from him with real "post" an not only "fake post"

find a way for them to read the messages and provide the solutions. they don't actually need to "show up."


.

[John Milton]

Regarding Zubby & Dody contribution on forum, I'm expecting the final answer this week...... If they agree, we'll see how this change the thing, if they don't I will have to find another solution (Find a professional travesty developper with trouble of personnality to accept use Zubby Name)

[FSGDAG]

Regarding Zubby & Dody contribution on forum,

Dody... Welcome BACK!!! I see you responded to some technical support questions on the forum... It is GREATLY appreciated!

[dody]

It look like i'm the most wanted person here

[inspireme]

well, their are lots of people who use indexU that are more than capable of answering 90% of the questions on this board, and even create small mods/hacks for people when requested... but why would they bother? even 2-3 hours a week by zubby/dody isnt going to help much because people expect answers quicker... and active community is free and fast support.

How do you get an active community? how about a few incentives - adsense idea is good, maybe 100 posts gets 20% off products, 500 posts get 50% ?

Next, lets encourage some new ideas... lots of blocks and addons are possible with indexU, can we have a mods page on indexU that allows instant payment and download of 3rd party mods? we could do it revenue share 30% to nicecoder.com and the rest to the developer. Developers are more likely to stick around on the forum, chat, and support their own work if they get paid.

just a few ideas.
matt

[Bruceper]

A mods page is good. Point out official threads for mods and possibly a purchase link but I'm not sure on the revenue sharing. Who gets paid and has to pay the other person? There are always costs involved with accepting payments.

Incentives for writing mods, a mods request (only) forum with a moderator that will merge multiple requests for the same mod and close threads for mods that are created.

And I can't say it enough times, vbulletin integration at least with the signup/authentication to start with.

[John Milton]

Thanks again for this tips, MODS Marketplace is a good idea... I still wait 2 more day and let's make a resume of theses idea at the end of the week and give me few days to process all of them !

More idea are welcome until theses 2 days elapsed

[Bruceper]

I've got another idea, which I don't know if you currently are doing or not. If you are then it is easily expandable.

Most payment companies offer a partners type of page where products that integrate their payment method can be showcased. If you aren't doing this already then I suggest you submit IndexU to the payment companies you already have.

I just completed a payment module for InternetSecure (merchant account provider) and will be releasing that shortly. You could then submit your product to them and get it included on their partner page.

You could also expand the number of payment types you accept and submit to those companies as well.

[John Milton]

I don't understand this request, can you reformulate for a French ?