Internet Marketing Down Under Forum - just launched

[Matt Rankin]

I've just launched a brand new forum which I think was in need, once that's specifically about Internet Marketing, and focused on the Australian Marketplace.

At this stage there's not a lot of content, but I'd appreciate your feedback on the main forum topics and layout itself.

I had an issue with speed (started it on shared hosting), but yesterday bought a VPS and migrated the site over to it.

What I really want to know is would you be inclines to register with the forum, or is there something that turns you off?

http://www.imdownunder.com

[exstatic]

Hi Matt,

Looks good, and great initiative.

I have run a lot of big forums that I have built from scratch and its not an easy task, one thing I did learn is not to have too many categories in the early stages as this confuses visitors and makes your forum look empty.

We found the sweet spot was between 4-8 forum categories and as the board grows break it up into more specific categories.

Best of luck.

[ray_223]

Hi Matt,

Looks good.

My question is ... "why the need for an Australian based site?"

Internet Marketing has a world wide market - except for a few small topics with SEO and .com.au domains - everything else should be the same no matter where you are?

What are peoples thoughts on the warrior forum and site point forums?

[Matt Rankin]

Originally Posted by ray_223

Hi Matt,

Looks good.

My question is ... "why the need for an Australian based site?"

Internet Marketing has a world wide market - except for a few small topics with SEO and .com.au domains - everything else should be the same no matter where you are?

What are peoples thoughts on the warrior forum and site point forums?

I Ray, I'm a member on SitePoint, Digialpoint, Blackhatworld, Moneymaker and Warrior Forums (mostly since 2008). Whilst each of these sites offers awesome amounts of knowledge, there is little to no information about targeting online campaigns to the Australian Audience. Apart from some online ventures I have whereby I'm targeting a US audience, I'm also looking to target my own IT business to Sydney-siders, and those forums only help from a high-level point of view.

A case in point would be the current under-utilisation of gumtree.com.au by Internet Marketers. This site should offer a gold mine to businesses if it is used correctly (i.e. not just a 4 line sales pitch). That's the sort of thing that's missing IMO.

[JacquiPryor]

Hi Matt,

I think it looks good and I like the "Marketplace" section. Nice to have some where to buy/sell/promote separate to generally discuss. Layout is clean and easy to follow - the topic descriptions all make sense etc.

I note a typo in your Marketplace section though:

Wanted to Buy
All wanted to by threads must be placed in this forum.

Think this should be "All wanted to buy threads..."

Best,

[seocourse]

Originally Posted by Matt Rankin

I've just launched a brand new forum which I think was in need, once that's specifically about Internet Marketing, and focused on the Australian Marketplace.

At this stage there's not a lot of content, but I'd appreciate your feedback on the main forum topics and layout itself.

I had an issue with speed (started it on shared hosting), but yesterday bought a VPS and migrated the site over to it.

What I really want to know is would you be inclines to register with the forum, or is there something that turns you off?

http://www.imdownunder.com

good luck mate.
I bought AustralianWebmaster and after 4 months I coudn't deal with the amount of Spam from India.... had to shut down the forum down and make it a blog....

Running a forum it's a huge challenge, best of luck fellow Warrior

[craiglongmuir.com]

looks fine...just getting the numbers up is the hard bit when in "catch 22"...

[Matt Rankin]

Originally Posted by JacquiPryor

Hi Matt,

I think it looks good and I like the "Marketplace" section. Nice to have some where to buy/sell/promote separate to generally discuss. Layout is clean and easy to follow - the topic descriptions all make sense etc.

I note a typo in your Marketplace section though:

Wanted to Buy
All wanted to by threads must be placed in this forum.

Think this should be "All wanted to buy threads..."

Best,

Thanks for pointing that out!

[Matt Rankin]

Originally Posted by seocourse

good luck mate.
I bought AustralianWebmaster and after 4 months I coudn't deal with the amount of Spam from India.... had to shut down the forum down and make it a blog....

Running a forum it's a huge challenge, best of luck fellow Warrior

Thanks mate, I have it pretty well locked down against spammers. Main thing to do is to remove the footprint "Powered by xyz" from the site, this is the first thing any spammer/tool looks for. Have done a couple of other things as well, no spam yet, and have mods on board already.

[thekrums]

I'm with exstatic on this one. The biggest turnoff for any forum is the feeling of emptiness.

You really have a large number of categories for the number of posts you have. How many posts per day do you think it would take to make that many categories look busy ? Maybe consider one of those "Recent activity" sections at the top if you don't want to reduce the categories, or some other form of aggregation.