Interview with Adrian Harris - Former Senior Operations Manager for vB

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  • the Sandman
    Senior Member
    • Jul 2003
    • 1539
    • 3.7.x

    Interview with Adrian Harris - Former Senior Operations Manager for vB

    We've just published our Interview with Adrian Harris (AKA IB Adrian).

    What are the common mistakes you see Forum Administrators making?

    From a community standpoint, they get caught up in drama, they are emotional, they are there for the wrong reasons (often power), they ban influential users and they don’t listen to their community or communicate effectively. Most of these things occur from the fact that they often overwork themselves, build up a strong team of admins, moderators – let them do the work for you, guide and lead them, but do it from a distance. I was proud at the site I mentioned earlier, it has over 600,000 registered users, and I think it has been around 2 years since someone was banned permanently (spammers excepted).


    What can forum owners do to increase traffic and revenues?

    Traffic can be easily built using Facebook, Twitter, always thinking about SEO (and I am not talking about complicated stuff here – think about what you name your forums, their descriptions – every word is a keyword). Build a network with other sites that might find your site a resource to get strong in-links, get useful and interesting content (writers can be cheap!)… the users will come. Revenue is easier again, typically the highest return is having people advertise directly on your site, but unless the site is very large, the time invested to build and maintain those relationships with advertisers may not be worth it. Look for ad partners beyond just google adsense who offer higher CPM’s (although adsense is a good partner, just because of the number of advertisers). Tier the intrusiveness of your ads. People who are unregistered/come from search are going to have a higher tolerance for more ads for example. Offer people the ability to either donate or become a premium member. The sooner you introduce monetization options with your site the better, not only does it validate your site as a business, but you will receive less backlash from users than if it was done at a later date. Also look at more forum specifc ad partners – aforementioned skimlinks for example, PostRelease is another.
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  • Artur Araripe
    New Member
    • Jan 2012
    • 29
    • 4.0.x

    #2
    Very good interview. Some important informations
    Congratz

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