“There’s no such thing as a free lunch”.  Heard that before?  Do you believe it?

OK, how about, “Money for old rope”?  Or even, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”?

In the 15 months since the BuildaSkill forums went live, we have -

• served over 213,000 page views to visitors
• grown traffic to over 460 page views per day (in just the forums)
• and from a very small but dedicated “hard core” membership, had almost 4000 posts added to the discussion and news boards

Not overly impressive site stats you might think?  And you’re probably correct compared to some higher profile sites.  Even the excuse that Gaz and I manage this site as a part-time venture, may not cut much ice with you if you’re comparing us to longer established and more heavily promoted sites.

However, ask yourself this – how many of the social networking sites, forums, and discussion boards that you currently use, give you money for posting on them?  Routinely, and in the background, just for doing what you normally do?

Since inception, BuildaSkill has operated a revenue-sharing program with its members.  What this means is that once you’ve signed up and completed your user profile page, you can add your affiliate IDs for Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, and TextLinkAds into a special section of your profile, and you could then be getting up to 95% of the advertising revenue the site accumulates from adverts on the forum topics you start.  The program is tiered, and your share grows as you post more topics and replies.

Let me just reiterate that – join the forums, complete your user profile, together with one, two, or all three of the affiliate IDs, and start discussion topics, then keep posting, and pretty soon you’ll be getting the lion’s share of the advertising revenue that the site attracts.

To date, from the just under 2000 topics created in our forums, we have -

• Served over 427,000 inline contextual adverts in total.
• Served almost 237,000 inline contextual adverts in member-started topics, that’s where the OP gets a share of all the revenue generated from adverts that appear on the page displaying their topic.
• Automatically allocated 55.4% of advertising revenue to members (no-one has reached the top tiers of the post counts … yet).

What are you waiting for?  This is money for old rope.  The software that we use automatically redirects the ad revenue from our publisher accounts to yours, so that it shows up (for example) in your own Google Adsense account and stats.  Google pay you directly, we’re not involved in the money side of things, only in providing the venue and attracting the traffic.  It’s been thoroughly tested and we know it works.

More interesting stats from our forums, and a lesson in how difficult it is to give money away -

• Just 4% of users have entered their affiliate IDs to their profiles – even when many of the 96% are known to own websites using one or more of the eligible affiliate programs.
• Less than 20% of members have personally posted the minimum of 10 forum posts needed to get onto the advertising-revenue-share ladder.
• Less than 40% of members have posted the minimum of 3 posts to open up additional “Make or Save Money” boards, and the business opportunity boards, to themselves.
• Less than 50% of members have even bothered to post at all, after registering as a forum user.

We understand that people are pressured for time, but how much time do people spend mooching around forum sites, reading and lurking, without joining in and sharing their knowledge or seeking help?  More pertinently, how much time do people spend reading and posting on forums such as the eBay Community Boards, risking sanctions and slaps, and not getting danger-money for doing so?

Joining the BuildaSkill forums takes only a minute, and of course it’s free.  Completing your personal profile page and adding your affiliate IDs takes another minute.  That’s maybe less time that it takes to boil the kettle to make a cuppa – what a great gift to give yourself while waiting for the water to heat up.

Give yourself a break, re-prioritise your “community time” this Christmas and New Year, and begin posting on a site that cares enough about you, to financially reward you for being one of us.  Think of it as an all-year-round Christmas present from Gaz and myself.

It’ll help offset some of those eBay fees.

Ed