Again, it looks as though there hasn’t been a whole lot of change in search engine numbers, but I did look at some of the results from Google and the ”vBSEO’d” links are starting to show up in the search results now. You can tell which links are “vBSEO’d” by looking at their url’s in the search results (i.e. the non dynamic urls).

site:gamingvidz.com (Google) dropped 700 to 32,700

site:gamingvidz.com (Yahoo) up 320 to 11,102

site:gamingvidz.com (MSN) down 7 to 100

I still think I can give it more time before I should see drastic improvements but I might browse the vBSEO forums to see what others have experienced.

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A few days ago I began writing early steps to start a successful forum that you can read here. Today I’m going to cover how to choose a forum software.

Step 3: Choose a forum software.

There are several different forum types, some free and others that aren’t. I’ll cover the premium ones first:

vBulletin is the leading forum software on the net and in my opinion the best solution out there. A single license is $160, with multi license discounts going into affect with the more licenses you own. I use vBulletin on every forum I run and have had an incredible experience using it. The community of webmasters that run this software is huge. If you have any trouble using vBulletin and need some help you can ask at the official forums, or at vBulletin.org (which is also home to a huge variety of sweet forum modifications). I will be covering vBulletin a lot on this blog, and truly believe this is the best forum software your money can buy. There are other premium forum solutions, but I won’t cover them on this site because I don’t use them. At $160 per license for vBulletin it can be a little expensive to get started - especially if your pockets are a little empty - if this is the case, free forum software might be a better alternative;

PhpBB is the most widely used open source free forum software. I personally have used it on a couple of my older sites and didn’t care for it. Granted, this was years before I really delved into the forum universe, but I had a ton of trouble with spam and in general didn’t have a great experience with phpBB. I’ve seen other people use it, but in the end it doesn’t compare to vBulletin and after working with vBulletin, I haven’t looked back. There are a few other free forum software solutions out there like Simple Machines and YaBB, but again, I haven’t had experience with these so I can’t comment on them.

In the next installment of my start a forum series, I’ll cover choosing a web host for your forum.

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Several days ago, I posted about applying to in text advertising programs and I never heard back from Kontera, even though I received an email stating they would get in touch with me in the next 24 - 48 hours. After waiting nearly five days, I decided to call them up the other day to see what the deal was. The representative I spoke with said my application was denied and stated the reason for the denial was lack of content. He checked out the site and said “Oh, I see plenty of content here. That must be a mistake.” So I let him know that GamingVidz.com has well over 200,000 posts and receives over 600,000 page views a month. He put me on hold to speak with his manager and got back to me a few minutes later. He let me know I was approved and that I did, in fact, get denied by mistake. He ended the conversation by informing me that I would be receiving my tags in the morning.

When I got up in the morning, I earnestly checked my email hoping to see the tags. Instead, I found an email stating I was denied because there was not enough content on the site to run the ads. Frustrated and a little annoyed, I replied to the email with the story I shared above. Now because I didn’t receive a reply to one of the questions I asked the support team a while back, I figured I should contact Kontera support via phone again and ask what the deal was. So during my lunch break I did, and this time the support rep wasn’t as helpful as the last one, He basically told me I had to wait to hear back from them. Again, frustrated and a little annoyed, I came back up to my desk and checked my email and lo and behold, my Kontera tags were waiting for me.

In the end, I’m pleased to finally have the situation straightened out, but let this be a lesson to you - If you apply for an advertising program and don’t receive any communication back follow up. Many times I see people accept defeat and move on without even searching for a reasonwhy they were denied. Don’t do this! When you’re denied by a publisher program, don’t accept defeat. Find out what the problem is and let them know you’ll fix it, or adjust your site to be eligible. If I had not followed up with Kontera and simply moved on I wouldn’t be able to run this in text advertising program on my forums.

He just heard back from one of them - Kontera. I am approved to use Kontera in text ads on GamingVidz.com and I am pretty excited to try it out. Kontera requires over 500,000 content rich page views a month, so you won’t see too many small forums running them. Either way, I’ll share my impressions after I’ve installed the ads, but I am expecting big things.

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After just recently launching XboxLiveArcade.com, I thought now would be a great time to start a series on the steps I use to start a forum and in the later parts of the series I’ll use examples from XboxLiveArcade to illustrate some points. For now check out these entry level steps. If you’re new to running websites or starting a forum read these first steps.

Step 1:

Select a topic you’re interested about. The worst mistake you can do when starting a new website or forum is to do it for the money. Pick a topic you’re interested about and worry about the money later.

Step 2: Buy a domain name.

Obviously always try to get the .com. If it’s already registered, consider trying to purchase it from the owner, especially if you intend to develop and run the forum for an extended period of time (6+ months). If you don’t get the .com and run it from a .net or some other TLD, the owner of the .com will be able to profit off the success of your site, because you will always lose some traffic to the .com.

There are tons of domain registrars out there, but I personally prefer to stick to the big brands and that’s why I purchase my domain names from GoDaddy.com. In the near final stages of a domain purchase you can apply a promotional code to save a few bucks. I use the promotion code OYH3 to get .com domain names for $7.20 after ICANN fees.

After you’ve selected a topic and purchased a domain name it’s time to select a forum software, that I’ll cover in my next part of the “start a forum” series.

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I finally finished work up on XboxLiveArcade.com, your one stop spot for XBLA game news, reviews and forums. To celebrate the launch of the site and encourage activity I’m running a contest to randomly give away five 1600 point marketplace point cards at the end of May to active members on the site.

Giveaway Details and Rules:

1. You must have at least 25 posts and 3 threads to qualify for the free cards that will be randomly given away. (You may not spam to achieve this.)

2. You can only have one account on the site (do not create multiple accounts in an attempt to increase your chances at winning. This can be tracked, so don’t try to circumvent the system).

3. At the end of May I’ll search our member database for those that qualify and the winners will be randomly selected and contacted via the private message system with the key card code for the 1600 Microsoft Points.

Do you think this giveaway will help to increase traffic? I do. It isn’t very hard to qualify for this competition and I’m sure we’ll have more than enough people participate on the site to make it worth it. I was going to put the post count requirement at only 10; however, In my experience I’ve learned that people post on video game based forums more frequently than in many other forum categories, so I put it at 25.

I know from experience that when it comes to forum competitions, don’t make the requirements to strict or people won’t even try to win. Often times it will possibly even have a negative affect on your attempts to increase forum traffic.

For example, I ran a $20 contest on AdobeChat.com to create a new video intro for GamingVidz.com and received only 1 entry. I know that $20 isn’t a lot of money but several people on GamingVidz expressed an interest in entering the contest and didn’t participate because I required people to have a certain number of posts on AdobeChat to enter. I believe this contest was doomed from the start, especially when I required people to join another forum just to participate in the contest on their home forum. What was I thinking? Quite simply, I wasn’t.

Take it from me: Don’t make forum contests overly complicated or difficult to have a chance to win. Your forum members will not think it’s worth their time, so they won’t participate and in the end it will be a waste of your time.

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There hasn’t been a whole lot of change in search engine numbers, but from browsing the vBSEO forums it looks like it takes a couple weeks to see more dramatic changes.

site:gamingvidz.com (Google) stayed the same  at 33,400

site:gamingvidz.com (Yahoo) up 708 to 10,782

site:gamingvidz.com (MSN) down 13 to 107

 Overall, I expected no change in these numbers this early. I will repost next Monday and include google analytics graphs from before the vBSEO installation, as well as, after the vBSEO installation.

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After you file to form an LLC you still have to fill out a master business application, so I did that a few moments ago. The last step will be to apply for an FEIN (Federal Employee Identification Number). Most people just call it an EIN.

In any case, I also applied for some in text advertising programs. You’ve probably heard of them before, Kontera and Intellitxt. I’m pretty sure I’ll get accepted as GamingVidz receives well over 500,000 page views a month - a figure both programs require to even be considered in the first place. I’ve heard good things from other forum administrators and believe it will be a great way to add another revenue stream to the site without a lot of work. I’ll let you know when I hear back from them.

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I took some time to file for an LLC in Washington this morning. I’m not sure about other states, but Washington’s site was easy to navigate, find what I was looking for, and file to form an LLC online . I expected to spend a lot of time figuring out not only where to go to form an LLC, but how to do it; however, it turned out to be relatively easy. It was pretty expensive at $195 though, but not nearly as expensive as it would cost you to file through one of those stupid “Form a Business in 3 Steps” sites. Before I got onto the various government sites this morning I browsed around a little on Google to see if there were companies that can do most of the legwork for you and there were a ton. Every one of these sites had package deals for forming corporations with some costing as much as $399! Do yourself a favor, if you’re looking to form a business in any state wether it’s a sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC or whatever, avoid doing so through these sites that require you to pay them just to file the paperwork that you can easily do for yourself on your respective state’s websites.

 Anyway, I should be hearing back from them in 24 - 48 hours at which time I will be able to finish off the other steps to form the business. I still have to apply for a Federal Tax ID number (EIN) and fill out a few more forms, but I’ve been meaning to do this for a while so I’m glad it’s taken care of. I wanted to get everything taken care of so that I can apply to some ad networks that require you to be a company to apply, but also to take care of all the tax stuff etc.

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