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8:37 am
June 3, 2013
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Financial Samurai
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Howdy Folks,
One of the initiatives of this summer's 5K Words A Week Challenge is to come up with and launch a project before Labor Day Weekend.
The project I've decided to pursue is to simply start a Investment and focused finance related forum on Financial Samurai.
For those who've never run a forum before, it takes a lot of time because there are a lot of spammers, relationship conflicts which need moderating, rule violations, etc. Also, there really is no monetary return in running a forum either. This is why the Yakezie Forums has some great volunteer forum administrators who all help pitch in if they see anything out of whack.
Hence, I'm wondering what are your thoughts on a monthly subscription forum on Financial Samurai. I take investing very seriously b/c of the risk and reward involved and I'm considering just focusing the forum to a target group of investors so that I don't have to deal with spammers or folks who might not be as passionate about their finances.
For example, if there were just 10 people registered for the Financial Samurai investing forum, but all 10 had a decade plus of investing experience and we could share and act upon money making ideas, that would be enough.
By charging even a nominal amount e.g. $5 a month, that would help screen out a lot of folks who are mainly there for the take and not for the give. I'm thinking a Membership Forum can be a great way for new visitors of my site or serious finance junkies who can't get enough to subscribe. A nominal fee's main purpose in the short-run is to screen folks out who aren't serious. Perhaps eventually, it can be a steady source of income.
Or, should I not even bother charging anything and have the forum as a free for all again?
Thoughts welcome! ETA for completion: June 10, 2013.
Thanks,
Sam
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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8:53 am
June 3, 2013
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PK @ DQYDJ
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If you go 'free', you could put a number of restrictions on it? No PMs or links until 10 posts, no polls until 50 posts? I've seen time limits too – 30 seconds between searches, 2 minutes between new topics, 30 seconds between replies?
If you do go free, I think the blocking links part is the main one. Spammers would have to last long enough to make 10 posts before they were free to pitch their wares – only to get banned anyway, heh.
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9:12 am
June 3, 2013
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Financial Samurai
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Post edited 9:14 am – June 3, 2013 by Financial Samurai
PK @ DQYDJ said:
If you go 'free', you could put a number of restrictions on it? No PMs or links until 10 posts, no polls until 50 posts? I've seen time limits too – 30 seconds between searches, 2 minutes between new topics, 30 seconds between replies?
If you do go free, I think the blocking links part is the main one. Spammers would have to last long enough to make 10 posts before they were free to pitch their wares – only to get banned anyway, heh.
Some good ideas. Any idea what forum software that is? I'll take a look at the current forum software I'm thinking of. Dealing with spammers is so painful. It's the biggest reason why I have my doubts of launching this new project.
There are a lot of investments out there where investors must be Accredited Investors e.g. $200K plus a year income for past two years. What about instituting such a requirement before investing?
Or maybe have $100K in investable assets as a less onerous requirement? Might actually motivate my readers to start saving more….
The concern is that there will be an elitist attitude to the forum, even though there is tons of free investing content on FS already. My main concern is not wasting time.
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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9:01 am
June 4, 2013
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PK @ DQYDJ
| | The Intersection of Politics, Economics and Personal Finance. | |
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vBulletin, phpBB or Lithium all look like they have some reputation features. Reputation in general is a good idea – if you encourage the thumbs up/downs, you can assign rep to your users. Another fail-safe for preventing the spam.
You don't need to put an Accredited Investor limit on it – but generally, to be an AI would be $200,000 for 2 years, $300,000 including a spouse (for those DINK couples with 2 $150k salaries), or $1,000,000 minus the primary house. You'd certainly cut down on the membership that way, heh.
Even with a smaller limit – other than a user agreement, how would you enforce it? "Send a screenshot of software showing your net worth over [$100,000 or $100,000 minus your house]"? "Send screenshots of accounts totaling at least $100,000"? (That one is the best of those limited options, since you could show exactly $100,000 without revealing everything).
I think that a lot of your time might be spent verifying that users are qualified, so I'd think a bit on validation here. You want to screen out people who don't care at all ($500 in their brokerage account), but you want to let people in who truly care ($10,000 in one stock or fund, perhaps? $20,000?).
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9:37 am
June 4, 2013
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savingadvice
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We have a 15 post plus 1 week membership rule before a link can be posted in our forums — it greatly reduces the spam, but certainly doesn't remove it completely. The main problem is then you get people posting junk to gain the 15 posts so that they can leave links…
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9:44 am
June 4, 2013
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Financial Samurai
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savingadvice said:
We have a 15 post plus 1 week membership rule before a link can be posted in our forums — it greatly reduces the spam, but certainly doesn't remove it completely. The main problem is then you get people posting junk to gain the 15 posts so that they can leave links…
Got it. The forum is really for investors and the end users of financial topics, not for bloggers. Hence, I'm assuming link spam shouldn't be a problem. It's not a problem here on the Yakezie Forum with all of us as bloggers, so I've got to suspect it won't be a problem on FS where 95% of the readers are not bloggers.
PK – The enforcement is a tricky issue. Guess it will be like what it always is, the honor system.
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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9:59 am
June 4, 2013
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savingadvice
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Financial Samurai said:
Got it. The forum is really for investors and the end users of financial topics, not for bloggers. Hence, I'm assuming link spam shouldn't be a problem. It's not a problem here on the Yakezie Forum with all of us as bloggers, so I've got to suspect it won't be a problem on FS where 95% of the readers are not bloggers.
PK – The enforcement is a tricky issue. Guess it will be like what it always is, the honor system.
My guess is that you will have more problems with spam with the financial topics — lots of financial scams out there and spammers willing to try to spread them. Of all the different personal finance categories we have, the investing category is one of the most heavily spammed.
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6:04 pm
June 4, 2013
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First Million is the Hardest
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IMO a subscription based forum isn't the way to go from the beginning. It takes a lot of active participants to make a successful forum and you're just not going to get that if you charge from the get go. I think the way to go is to keep it free to start and then once you're established you can think about charging something to keep the riff-raff out. This is basically how it happened with the one paid forum I belong to, and even after building a very loyal user base over 2-3 years there was plenty of attrition to the membership once they started charging a $5 membership fee.
I really like Vbulletin as a forum platform. I really don't think there's a foolproof way to prevent spam other than having vigilant moderators. I've yet to come across one online that didn't deal with a certain amount of it, regardless of a membership fee.
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6:12 pm
June 4, 2013
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sooverthis
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I have paid for forum memberships before, but generally only when the forum is well-established and offers me info I desperately need but can't get anywhere else. I think it might be worth extending free membership to a very limited number of people in the beginning to get the community going, but you definitely need a good hook to convince people to pay.
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6:31 pm
June 4, 2013
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Financial Samurai
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Post edited 8:36 pm – June 4, 2013 by Financial Samurai
I keep going back to what the purpose of the forum is. It's not for more traffic or recognition for the site. It's a place where I want to hang out with like-minded folks who are active investors in the market who actually act and not just pontificate. There is some serious money to be made (and lost) investing, but opportunities are missed all the time because one person can't efficiently find all the good ideas. Once an idea is presented, it can be vetted by the forum community so to not miss anything. A large portion of my income is now through investments so I take investment ideas very seriously.
If there were just 5-10 people in the forum, all whom are experienced investors and nothing more, that would be great! I think I've got stock market ADD or something where I'm constantly going back and forth with 20-30 different trading ideas at a time. Twitter is not a good medium and it takes a long time writing investment idea blog posts and getting feedback.
I'm afraid if I open up the forum without some hurdles, it will turn into a free for all, over run by spammers and folks who will start asking basic questions, which may be fine but not ideal. Maybe what I do is make all the forum categories public except for the investment forum.
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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7:12 pm
June 4, 2013
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First Million is the Hardest
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Financial Samurai said:
I keep going back to what the purpose of the forum is. It's not for more traffic or recognition for the site. It's a place where I want to hang out with like-minded folks who are active investors in the market who actually act and not just pontificate. There is some serious money to be made (and lost) investing, but opportunities are missed all the time because one person can't efficiently find all the good ideas. Once an idea is presented, it can be vetted by the forum community so to not miss anything. A large portion of my income is now through investments so I take investment ideas very seriously.
If there were just 5-10 people in the forum, all whom are experienced investors and nothing more, that would be great! I think I've got stock market ADD or something where I'm constantly going back and forth with 20-30 different trading ideas at a time. Twitter is not a good medium and it takes a long time writing investment idea blog posts and getting feedback.
I'm afraid if I open up the forum without some hurdles, it will turn into a free for all, over run by spammers and folks who will start asking basic questions, which may be fine but not ideal. Maybe what I do is make all the forum categories public except for the investment forum.
5 or 10 people in the forum may be great for what your purposes are, but it's not so great for them. A forum getting a few posts per day from the same people over and over will certainly die out before long. You're better off finding those 5-10 experienced investors and emailing back and forth with them whenever one of you has an investing idea.
For a forum to succeed it needs a large, active user base (think Yakezie or TwoPlusTwo). Knowing that there will always be fresh posts and new conversations is what keeps forums alive because those are the reasons people will keep coming back.
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7:33 pm
June 4, 2013
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Financial Samurai
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Post edited 8:01 pm – June 4, 2013 by Financial Samurai
Jay, why would you say having a group of 10 folks wouldn't be great for them? Do you think most people want lots and lots of categories and posts? I know I can't handle all the topics, nor can I handle a potential flood of questions.
What is the end goal of a successful forum in your opinion because I've mentioned it's not for traffic purposes, nor is it for direct monetization purposes. The main purpose is to share investment ideas and vette investment ideas. Take the Fidelity Contrafund for example, you've got the main fund manager and a team of analysts following different sectors to hunt for the best names possible. I'm thinking something along these lines.
If the investment forum members can generate another Chinese internet trading idea for example, it could be a homerun. The forum is really not for popularity purposes. It may eventually become popular, but that's a secondary outcome.
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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8:50 pm
June 4, 2013
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First Million is the Hardest
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Financial Samurai said:
Jay, why would you say having a group of 10 folks wouldn't be great for them? Do you think most people want lots and lots of categories and posts? I know I can't handle all the topics, nor can I handle a potential flood of questions.
What is the end goal of a successful forum in your opinion because I've mentioned it's not for traffic purposes, nor is it for direct monetization purposes. The main purpose is to share investment ideas and vette investment ideas. Take the Fidelity Contrafund for example, you've got the main fund manager and a team of analysts following different sectors to hunt for the best names possible. I'm thinking something along these lines.
If the investment forum members can generate another Chinese internet trading idea for example, it could be a homerun. The forum is really not for popularity purposes.
I'm not saying the discussion or the relationships between those 10 people wouldn't be great, I just don't think a forum is the ideal medium for that.
IMO the end goal of a successful forum is to build an active community centered around a specific topic. A forum, much like a blog, needs fresh material to survive.
Speaking from experience, there are several forums I used to frequent that I simply faded away from and now never visit because there weren't enough new posts or discussion to sustain my interest. Just as there are probably blogs you don't read anymore because the owner started posting too randomly or infrequently.
It depends on what your goal is. If you're looking for a place to discuss investing ideas with a small handful of people whose opinions you respect, a forum probably isn't what you're looking for. If you want to create a place where FS readers can gather to discuss investing ideas & strategies with each other then a forum is probably the best way to do that.
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7:58 am
June 10, 2013
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Financial Samurai
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Hi Guys,
Thanks for the feedback. I've decided to go with somewhat of an open hybrid approach. You can find the details of the launch of the Financial Samurai Forum post here. The forum will be predominantly focused on Investing, Real Estate, Career, Entrepreneurship, and Retirement. Please come sign up if you're interested. I'm sure it'll take several months to build up the community, but I'm confident it will be one of the best Forums out there for building wealth and achieving financial independence.
Thanks for your suggestions and please keep them coming!
Sam
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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1:58 pm
June 10, 2013
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Pauline
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Congratulations Sam!
Will that still fit within your 4 hour workdays? It does sound like a lot of work. You could try some kind of merit base private membership that would give the best contributors access to private forums. Being hand picked you would avoid the spam problem, and can consider a membership fee down the road.
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2:04 pm
June 10, 2013
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Financial Samurai
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Post edited 2:28 pm – June 10, 2013 by Financial Samurai
Pauline said:
Congratulations Sam!
Will that still fit within your 4 hour workdays? It does sound like a lot of work. You could try some kind of merit base private membership that would give the best contributors access to private forums. Being hand picked you would avoid the spam problem, and can consider a membership fee down the road.
Thanks Pauline. The new forum initially will definitely crimp my 4 hours a day maximum goal. But I've got to put in the effort and listen to the community to build the proper foundation first. Over time, I hope it runs on auto pilot where Members help each other, kind of like here at Yakezie. It was very VERY difficult in the beginning to manage the Yakezie Forum, but things are good now. We've got forum leaders and administrators and a good culture that pretty much everyone upholds.
Once the forum reaches critical mass, I may decide to take it private and make it invite only or give good standing Members the ability to invite their friends. It's a feature I'm planning on using with the Vanilla forum software.
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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