Many of your folks thinks that success comes by hard work! Yes even you might think alike isn’t it? That’s what i use to think before I came to experience the real deal

Lot of successful Online communities out there will not tell you ” Behind-the-scene truth” on nhow you can simply succeed. All you will hear is hard work!

But that’s a BIG LIE! Did you hear what i just said?

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Yes I meant it. Let me gist you a little

I have been creating website for my clients and myself since 2006 till date, I have co owned many unsuccessful communities some I may not get their names, one aspect of our work is that we made sure all will be great in areas of hard work and with buffalo-us hard work but it always end up frustrating

But earlier This Year i came to understand some real cool secret that will enable you grow your online community.

This will surprise you

#1. Think Hard to Avoid “WORKING HARD”!

That’s that suppose to mean? yes you would say so. many of you often get into this system because everyone is dong it, like they say ‘success has lots of parents and best friend’ but failure is an orphan. You never knew that there are millions of websites that comes online daily and only few survives the journey. These few are what we celebrate like they were the only ones that ran the race! it wasn’t so Dear!

Stop working your ass out on every clone kind of site ,use your brain first. Yes build those castles on air. Analyze it. see it in dream world running. Try to see its short and long term success. see its challenges, can you beat it? Creating new concept isn’t just hard it require wisdom and skills.

Remember “wisdom is the wining ticket, when wisdom increases struggle decreases.”! – Bishop Oyedepo

Before you start that project Think about This

A How much you have ( it will determine your strength)

B Your Target audience

C Work force ( will talk on it latter)

#2. The Concept, Domain. and Hosting.

The name will determine how far it may go. I ran Afripals for a while it was a great name, always appealing to peoples emotion because of the Africa attached to it even until now. This is very important especially when you will need to use the FIRST TIME ADVANTAGE. take Nairaland for instance there can never be anything like it. build thousands of its clone, we will always tell you ‘ You build something like Naira land’

Why is that suppose to be so? was Nairaland created from Heaven since the begging of time? What about social network? During those times in school my friends will tag it ‘ he built something like Facebook‘ it takes me a lot of energy to convince them that its not Facebook like but my own like . Facebook will always win with first time advantage. So Think Smart to avoid working HARD

#3 Platform to Go?

Platform refers to the System and language your website will be hosted or created with I for once haven’t considered any platform than Linux server and PHP scripting because its what my budget can lay hold to. Having in mind that this is an open platform, gives me peace of mind that I will always find freelancer developers to work on my site

Likewise it avails you this opportunity to utilize open source frameworks (CMS) such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, SMF and lots to kick-start rather than hiring resource consuming Developers

#4 Hosting & Budget?

For a while i have been using shared server to host my sites but when projects like communities ( social network, Big Portals, Download sites) must be sent to VPS

Don’t be Scared of VPS because of COST Its cheaper than Shared Hosting, Just hear me out

there is a community www.lowendbox.com where you can get VPS at dirty and affordable prices… Almost all of them are reliable. My sites are all hosted on VPS right now. you could get a VPS with 4GB Ram, 200GB Hard disk, 5TB Traffic, 5Cores , up to 1000mbps Network speed and 4 Ip’s @ $48 Yearly. That’s around N10,000 Naira ( you can even start a small web hosting with it )

Installation of Control Panel is a breeze, you can install many of then with secured environment

see List of them on Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_hosting_control_panels

I for once have used many but ISP Config, Webmin, Centos Control panel beats them all

another real stuff is that using them will help you get to understand some system languages such as linux etc. it create an avenue for self development on server management., you can order for a VPS of $12 yearly there to practice and learn

WHY I ADVISED YOU FOR VPS. in 2009 i hosted a site MY1ng.com on bluehost shared server. things were great until they started warning me that i am exceeding my CPU quota, how the heck am I suppose to know what CPU is? i thought they gave me UNLIMITED HOSTING?

But That’s a mistake. Sites like nairaland and Download communities or social network shouldn’t be hosted on shared server. another pain in it will be on technical side. after a while i hard to migrate to a VPS server but was more expensive because the data was too much I had to hire someone to do it. almost double of my VPS Server cost.

After getting this What NEXT?

#5 WORK FORCE

Can SEUN Manage all this Post and categories on Nairaland alone? our mentality will always be greedy to own it all, don’t think silly, strike a deal with people who are more resourceful than you. Take a look. When i started this website Naijans.com I don’t had nay intention of posting News daily because its not my style, am a web developer and stuff like news bore me put. of course i don’t have great income to put journalist(s) on payroll i had had to do was this

Strike a deal with the following

Get people to submit articles and news and get something for exchange or in monetary value

Strike a deal with a workaholic writer to own certain percentage of the company share i may not pay him/her fully well and encourage him to bring in other writers like him to write on his behalf. ( this will make him see this venture as his and protect it with all ‘alarcrity’)

One thing that will sustain any site is consistency and how good your community will contribute to users welfare, maybe yours isn’t about articles and news maybe social network. if you are the vision bearer, be sure to rope in a developer as your shareholder to reduce the cost of running maintenance or bring in a social media activist that will be luring his/her friends through invitations.

Assign role to them for instance

Am the CEO/President ( at the Back the Developer)

my role lies on technical aspect, My Next inline is General Manager / Senior admin ( For now monitors, Post, Users contribution, Also makes post regularly

Then We have Authors, Editors and Adverts personnel. It may not be as long as like this but assign Task to help you Work Smart

WORK SMART NOT “HARD”, THINK SMART NOT “HARD”

Then if those are put in Place Announce it

CASH is the easiest Announcer. It doesn’t cost a lot to advertise on Nairaland maybe in that area of interest. one week is enough for a start. Sponsor your page on facebook

with 5-10k you can do all these, Invite your friends, from all Social networks you are active. Roll out small Contest and give away maybe throw a question with answers to get N100 -200 etc airtime. even make the post from your website and past the link on your wall.

#6 Then Last is Monetize it

I can not say a lot on this because i believe this is the earnest expectation all your Smart thinking. At the end your instinct should direct you. ADSENSE is a kick start ( helping you pay some bills ) until personal advertisers comes in.

This secrete will surely equip you to succeed if you apply it. Am sure it was really worth it. if you encounter any issues or need advise especially on big projects or communities i am here to answer your questions.

SOURCE http://www.naijans.com/10/discovery-6-things-successful-secret-online-community-owners-will-never-tell-you.html