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In the past couple of months I have seen so many people pushing instruction manuals of “Starting an Online Community”. That is not an exact name of a program; it’s just the type of packages they are selling.

Having your own online community is great in many ways.
You can control the topic,
Promote yourself,
Build links……

Yes, you can do all that and more. Those are the type of advantages these ‘community guru’s’ are telling you in all their sales letters.

They know that you will have $ in your eyes, you’ll have visions of heaps of traffic, you may even dream of being on the cover of the Rolling Stone after reading all their hyped up sales letters.

Slow down cowboy…they seem to also be throwing in a few things that are not really the truth for all people.

The biggest bitch I have with these sales letters is they say… You do not have to build content; your members will build it for you. I call Bullshit!

Unless you are someone with a big name and LOTS of good friends…plan on building all of your own content for along time.

On the other hand, if you don’t mind copy and paste ads…then yes, you can get lots of post in your community. You will have enough shit links to build a mountain.

You will also find that many people that want to look as if they are smart will copy other people’s articles and claim them as their own. Now, you have to deal with the pissed off owner of the content.

Another thing the sales letters do not tell you is how much time a community takes to moderate.

Yes, you may have hour’s worth of deleting users and their post.

You will have people that just post where ever they find, no matter if it fits the topic or not.

You will also have to deal with complaints about ads being sent through the personal message system.

I bet you get the idea of what I am saying here.

The only way to stop some of this crap spam is to have a paid or private community.

There are ups and downs to these options.

Both of these options are going to cut way down on your membership. Yet, they will also cut way down on spam.

If you have a paid membership you have the option of letting people in for free or a discount IF you feel they will be a benefit.

You can also make a little money to cover hosting….

There are 2 ways to handle a private community.

1.)Is to have it Invite Only. This is great IF you have a small group that you already know. But, you can pretty much expect the membership to stay the same. Most people will NOT request an invite (or they may not know who to ask).

2.) You can have a ‘hidden’ community. This means that only members can see it. I find these totally USELESS! Most people will never know it even exists. Most owners of these even have them ‘No Index’ so even if you write the best freakin post ever…no one will see it except existing members and I would bet a dollar that one of them will steal it and post it as their own other places.

Now, I do not want to discourage people from building communities, I just thought I would let you in on a few things these ‘gurus’ might not be telling the whole truth about.

I have been an Admin, moderator, and member of forums and communities for years and know that it is not as easy as some would think.

We have The Internet Marketers Guild that is a paid forum. I have built the majority of the content myself. That is fine, I see the incoming SE traffic, I know that people are finding info they want. It’s like an Info Library. If we have a post on the board and I see someone asking for that info...I can just send them a link.

Sheryl Loch

Ps. I have NOT bought any of the Community Building Ebooks or Packages that I am getting spammed with. I am going only on the sales letters they send.