I had a few readers request that I start a John Chow dot Com forums. I have toyed with the idea for the past few days but haven’t quite made up my mind on it. On one hand, having a forum would allow more interaction with readers. Right now, the blog is kinda forum like but all the posts are started by me.
Starting a forum could also take comments away from the main blog and that is something I don’t want to do because comments help drive traffic. I have found a VB hack that will take over the Wordpress comment system but it’s not as integrated as I would like it to be. The hack just takes you to the forums in order to comment and the comments no longer show up in the post itself. If someone can make a VB hack that allows readers to comment right on the blog and have those comments show up under the blog post, it would be idea.
What are your thoughts? Would you like to see a forum for this blog? Would you use it? do you think it will take away from current community setup? Feedback would be very much appreciated.
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Nah, i always thought that forums were on their way out being replaced with commenting on blogs.
I agree, I think forums have their place and there’s a thriving community around this site but I think you’ll find people come here for your thoughts; reading each others’ would probably be quite a different thing.
You have a good setup here John so I wouldn’t consider changing it. The focus should always be on you anyway; don’t want others taking the focus away do you?
hmm…forums…lets do a poll
For all link hungry people..get a link from a PR4 blog(meh blog !!)
No complicated reviews to write…just put in the basic 3 lines mentioned at the link below(you can add anything else you like) and I will do the same
Cheers,
Biggs
nice plug
I agree with Seopher. I think that with your blog being about your writings, comments to the blog posts are the best way to go.
I can’t see myself using a JohnChow.com forum. If there’s anyone here I want to get in touch with in greater detail on a topic, I can easily do it by visiting their site and finding their contact form.
Definitely. Forums are sooo 1994!
I don’t think it would work. Your success is based upon a marketing machine focused on “John Chow” - a forum drops that right away and you’d lose your edge.
You can probably be more original than ‘just another forum’ anyway. Why not start the “John Chow Cash Club” that charges $49.95 per month and offers personalized advice and guidance along with a free weekly newsletter?
Kumiko, be careful with your free counsel!
John, you cant eat your cake and have it. forum would be a minus for this blog.
Forum is for the lazy ones, and I know that John is a hard worker.
Iknow a guy in my country who staed a forum two years ago and today he is Alexa rank 32,000; PR 6, over a million posts and over 100,000 membership. He rakes in close to $2,000 monthly from AdSense.
While a blog might be an instance success, forum may not. Every copycat that has tried to copy the success of this guy in the last 2 years have failed.
I was going to add a forum to my blog, but decided not to. Oh, and for those of you that didn’t get my email I’ve started up my blog again. I was just bogged down with other projects that took up all my time
Couldn’t sell it, hey?
Kumiko, not true, Mitch got involved in email marketing. He did not sell or attempted to sell his blog.
Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but I seem to remember Harpzon.com being on sale for $5000?
I’m sure posting a blog revival post on JohnChow.com will help.
Add a forum john, would be cool
I disagree, I have tons of questions and usually nobody reply in comments, because everybody is busy to get into Top Commentators
In forums, people have more opportunities to share their knowledge.
Beside, forum signatures work even better then comments to promote your blogs
i agree John. Don’t open a forum up, because then it’ll drive your readers away from commenting.
I think it would be a good idea so that more interaction can be offered.
I agree with that 100 %
Might be a good idea if you were to create a forum however maybe you could simply link to it as a separate entity and this time work in a possible exit strategy. You can then flip your evil forums into the hands of a wise investor.
Now thats a better idea.
But as Mr.Chow said earlier, he never sell’s his 
masterpieces!
Stephen, I can’t agree more.
The remarkable brand name of John Chow is a hot seller in the blogosphere.
Starting an independent Forum by him is likely to succeed after some time, than to add a forum extension to his blog here.
If it is a resourceful forum, it would take off with its own momentum, with little contribution from John. It would be a passive income thing for him.
Like I already said aforetime, i know of somebody making some 2,000 bucks monthly Adsense income from his popular forum.
“Starting a forum could also take comments away from the main blog and that is something I don’t want to do because comments help drive traffic.”
So does providing a feed. Less people visit your site, because they read the feed. But that doesn’t stop a community.
On one hand a forum might strengthen your community, but I’m not sure your community is the “forum type”.
One thing you might wanna check out is bbpress, the forums by the makers of Wordpress. Who knows there’s a way to link it to your blog.
I probably wouldn’t visit your forum often. Well, very rarely is a better phrase.
One more thing: A forum for TZ is probably be more relevant.
Did you mean TTZ? If yes, there are already. And about RSS, those readers DO come to comment
Which is exactly my point. The feed didn’t stop people from visiting the site.
Rehuel,
I wish you would get my point. If the forum is an extension of JohnChow Dot Com, I guess the forum would suffer dehydration, because of the overwhelming popularity of the blog.
If the forum is INDEPENDENT of this blog it would sure grow and gather her own crowd and not necessarily share traffic with this blog, nor depend on miserly remnant of traffic from this blog.
Feeds are different, it is the same content. For example, My blog’s feed is over 3,200 subscribers, and it truly helped bring traffic to my blog.
The same cannot be boasted for a Forum receiving terrific traffic from her parent blog’s domain
I get John Chow from RSS, and I find I check far more often than I would have using a browser because I check all my feed once a couple of hour instead of maybe checking John Chow once at the end of the day with a browser. If there is something is interesting in the Feed I’ll probably visit the site view the comments or comment myself.
If you do have a forum, think about this. What categories would you put on there? Would people simply talk about John Chow? Is it a Feedback forum, or like general chat.
You have to be specific. If it is just a forum about talking about the John Chow Blog suggestions and feedback then it probably not that worthwhile since you already have a contact form.
Hope that helps. P.S. I wrote you a review on http://www.usmansworld.com please check it out.
Dude, your ‘buy me weed’ link is hillarious. But maybe it can get you into trouble
Is is off topic but you can pretty much say anything you want (except for cases like yelling fire in a movie theater), as long as you don’t actually do as you say or in this case you parent doesn’t find out…
yeah i got a good laugh out of that too!.. who would be the dealer in that scenario?
Yeah I thought about that. That is why I got a “buy me a drank” link. It is more suitable because it is from that song by T-Pain (I got money in da bank, let me buy u a drank)
I wouldn’t recommend it. Exchange under users is definitely an interesting thought, but then again, it won’t really benefit you and your income.
John,
If you go the forum route, I think you will need to set it up as a separate site altogether and find a way to monetize it. Something like that will make it possible for you to implement an exit strategy as the forum’s content will actually be run by the community and not just John Chow.
Other than that, I don’t think this blog needs a forum tagged on to it.
Definitely agree, I run a forum, but for some reason I didn’t like any forum branched off a blog. Most of the topics is the forum were lackluster because the quality stuff was of course where they belong in the blog.
I don’t know John maybe you can work some of your magic…
Forums traditionally monetize exceptionally poorly…
Marc,
there are exceptions to this ‘tradition’. A good and resourceful forum generates tons of passive income for the owner.
Those who argue that forums are poor earners should list those ‘poor’ forums for me and I would tell you why they are poor earners.
I agree with the above post. If you decide to create a forum, then be sure to make it a separate site where only your loyal readers will go to.
In turn, the forum could probably drive traffic to your blog as well.
Hey Andrej, the thing is that people *most* readers don’t come here to read what others have to say. We are here for what the DOT COM MOGUL has to say. There are many forums already, whats the point?
I think you should open a forum. I’m sure you would get less emails from people asking you how to do stuff.
You might need to have another beer after this John. Is there a way you can conduct a poll measurement on this to see statistically?
I don’t think so, John. I think it would be wise to keep your eggs in one basket, rather than expanding to a forum.
I think there’s a lot to be said for keeping focused on one entity. Blogging is what you do. The blog is what your readers are happy with.
Forums have their place, but I don’t think this is the place. Don’t get me wrong, I think plenty of readers will use the forum if you create it, and I think it will entice new visitors, but it just wouldn’t feel right, in my opinion. You talk about a lot of different subjects, and the only reason you (and others in the same boat) get away with discussing so many different things is because you’re able to control it all yourself. I guess what I’m trying to say is I agree with Usman. The forum isn’t likely to have a clear focus, and it’s likely there are 101 other similar forums that do a perfectly good job.
For what it’s worth, this is my first comment on your blog. I come here to read the personal, objective opinions of you. I don’t come here to partake in general forum style talk, where everybody has their say, we have a “post count”, a reputation system, signatures at the bottom of each comment from a user etc and most of all, I come here because topics are presented by you and the comments stick to that topic. With a forum, no matter how hard you moderate, you’ll find topics go way off topic and the discussion quality suffers.
I think you’ll find it to your advantage, and the advantage of your readers, if you continue to build on and improve this blog, rather than develop a public forum.
Let me put it this way. Would you want somebody to create a site that is in direct competition to this blog? In my opinion, that’s exactly what you will be doing if you create a forum. I think you have to decide whether you want a blog *or* a forum. Frankly, I think it’s been shown that a blog is far superior to a forum, and that’s why you decided to start blogging when you did, rather than starting a forum.
I hope that helps!
Jamie
Jamie,
that is good talk and frank too. if he loses focus, someone else would find the thread and continue weaving it from where john veered off.
If his INDEPENDENT forum is quite resourceful, there would be little or no diversionary labor on his part, and the forum would still make a coooool passive income for him.
But it is possible for both of his ‘baskets’ to be filled to the brim with eggs. If handled with wisdom for which John is known for.
I could do with two full baskets than a full one.
Ya poll is a good idea…but nah i forum wont really help…i mean i come hereto see what you have to say and rant about it….if the forum has like specific case studies in which people post meaningful responses of their experience making money…then I can see that being a hit
i thinks forums not a good idea it will take attention off the blog and it wont be blog it would be a webbsite/forum and i don’t want a blog to be a website
why not use XMB less spam posters and you can hack the crap out of that thing include things like shop hack the more posts the more points and you can buy things
John I think that signs are mostly pointing to NO.
Lets make it easy for John and if your in for the idea of a forum post a
“YES”
then comments
or if your not give a a big
“NO”
then comments
We will only make it easy on you this one time John
NO
Yep, people agree for NO forum, otherwise you will deviate your users away from your main content on your blog. I had a forum but then I thought that I want the discussions on my blog in the coments.
no, don’t do a forum.
FYI: Shoemoney tried it and it didn’t work out.
Thanks for that info about the failure of Shoemoney.
If a guru like him can fail. All you need is to go and learn great lessons from his failure.
I think a forum would be a nice addition. I don’t think it’d draw away too many blog comments.