What other forums do you find valuable?

Callum Short

Callum Short

Founder @ Beambox.com
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I'm trying to connect to as many resources as possible. Mainly in the marketing/sales/biz space.

What other forums do you use?
 
I have used a bunch over the years.

The GSA forum has a nice community IMO but Google is too smart for their toolsets these days. Reddit can be decent but I only really pay attention to /r/juststart these days as the mods on most subs don't seem to care.

BHW is/has going the way of Warrior Forum IMO. You can't do anything unless you pay them but the guys who pay them can churn out any old crap and bump their BST threads with fake review counts and stuff without issue. Mods are enforcing rules that aren't public so members don't know they are breaking them.
 
I've been a member of them all.

If you like to read broken English where people buy old accounts or try to spam the post count up on new ones to enact some kind of scam later, check out Black Hat World, Warrior Forum, Digital Point, and any Facebook groups.

If you like pornography and racism, read the Wickedfire archives if you can even get a new account approved these days. Don't pay the monthly fee to read the "best of" threads. The good stuff has already been re-written here or outdone here. The rest isn't worth digging for, since none of it really applies these days. The best part of that forum is how many times the administrator has scammed the user base and they keep falling for it.

If you like guru nonsense and bickering, check out other tiny black hat forums, but don't buy anything or reveal anything about your business. Scams are going on constantly. Don't install their plugins. I wouldn't even bother since even our resident spammer @shaunm has openly said he's done spamming because it flat out doesn't work any more.

If you want to feel ripped off, pay for any of the paywall forums like Stack That Money and other guru group forums. Their game is to trick you into thinking they hold the secrets, then you enter the barely maintained forum full of the same old nonsense.

Information is free and wants to be free or cheap enough that anyone can access it (the cost of a book). When it's not, you should be suspicious.

At the end of the day, this is the only one that matters any more, but I'd like to see more activity from it. I'm hopeful since I'm starting to see a lot of bloggers and gurus stealing content from here now.
 
Future State said:
I've been a member of them all.

If you like to read broken English where people buy old accounts or try to spam the post count up on new ones to enact some kind of scam later, check out Black Hat World, Warrior Forum, Digital Point, and any Facebook groups.

If you like pornography and racism, read the Wickedfire archives if you can even get a new account approved these days. Don't pay the monthly fee to read the "best of" threads. The good stuff has already been re-written here or outdone here. The rest isn't worth digging for, since none of it really applies these days. The best part of that forum is how many times the administrator has scammed the user base and they keep falling for it.

If you like guru nonsense and bickering, check out other tiny black hat forums, but don't buy anything or reveal anything about your business. Scams are going on constantly. Don't install their plugins. I wouldn't even bother since even our resident spammer @shaunm has openly said he's done spamming because it flat out doesn't work any more.

If you want to feel ripped off, pay for any of the paywall forums like Stack That Money and other guru group forums. Their game is to trick you into thinking they hold the secrets, then you enter the barely maintained forum full of the same old nonsense.

Information is free and wants to be free or cheap enough that anyone can access it (the cost of a book). When it's not, you should be suspicious.

At the end of the day, this is the only one that matters any more, but I'd like to see more activity from it. I'm hopeful since I'm starting to see a lot of bloggers and gurus stealing content from here now.
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Interesting take. I'm not sure on STM though, I think it can be quite useful to get a general feel for the paid traffic industry ( SEO section was quite dead there last time I checked ), or connect/network with other people and moderators are quite active giving feedback in follow-along threads. I can't say it's worth the $99 or whatever it was though. What do you think?

I got my start reading BHW, it's full of misinformation and nonsense, but atleast I had some information to take action on and rest was purely trial and error.
 
STM looked like a good forum to me. It isn't guru worshipping. It shows you how to do the basics in a clear precise manner and it is great for networking. I've been to some of their events and it's a lot of fun.
 
@Future State
Only my 2 cents: (of course there are exceptions)

The game now is about tell that you can x or y, but no proof...
So you either can buy my stuff or click this link, so I can get some commission
 
Facebook has hit forums hard, which is a shame because i much prefer the format, search-ability and permanence of a decent forum.
TBH this is the only digital marketing forum i use much now, otherwise its fb groups
 
Future State said:
I'm hopeful since I'm starting to see a lot of bloggers and gurus stealing content from here now.
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So glad you said this.

I've had a thorn in my side, because I also thought I saw this as well and now I am just basically going to believe it as truth.

______

As far as other forums, I would suggest the Fastlane Forum by MJ DeMarco
 
BuildSociety is the last forum left.

WF is dead. BHW/Warrior/DigitalPoint/SitePoint/etc are just foreigners looking to make a few fast dollars. The darker forums are just spammers trying to sell to other spammers.

Facebook groups are just filled with wanna be gurus trying to promote their blog, product/service. It doesn't matter how big or small they are, it's the same nonsense.

Communities like growth hacker and (that other once popular one) are just filled with bullshit articles to self-promoted garbage. They are like Warrior Forum in a different format now.

Fast Lane Forum is alright, but it's not IM focused. At the end of the day, there's a lot of people trying to be false gurus. It gets old after you see the pattern of topics after awhile.

Skype groups are all dead. Slack chats are just so large that it's impossible to post anything without it being too public.

IM just isn't what it used to be. The golden days are gone. :( Golden, not as in profitable... But as in connecting with people, discussing things, making downtime less boring, etc. Tons of people trying to hustle, now it's just a few and no ones really being public about it.
 
contract said:
Fast Lane Forum is alright, but it's not IM focused. At the end of the day, there's a lot of people trying to be false gurus. It gets old after you see the pattern of topics after awhile.
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Are you saying FLF is full of false guru's? If you are, you def. don't read the forum ( because I can read between the lines better than anyone ) or attend the awesome event that just happened in Scottsdale. Meeting these people face to face would prove otherwise to you.

Maybe there is more to life than IM?

You can learn critical skills from people outside IM that help your IM career. No one presented about IM at this years event and I took away some great stuff that impact some things I do in IM this year.

Why do people need to be public about what they do in IM? No one wants to be ripped off, which is what the IM community has turned into. You need to be in the trenches finding your own gold and not worried about finding some magical "it" or finding a "someone" in some other community.

I've been ripped off dozens of times with my ideas/methods/sharing. You think I'm gonna share great stuff online about IM anymore?

You just gotta go hard in your own paint and dig in those trenches bro. If you can't do that, then you wont make it in IM very much longer.

Stop trying to find it elsewhere.



.
 
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Only keep up with BUSO and /r/JustStart now days. Was an official [premium status needed to reveal content] of WickedFire and other places, but just not worth it anymore to even skim. My projects and perspectives have also shifted though from survival to portfolio and M&A based, so there's that too.
 
contract said:
IM just isn't what it used to be. The golden days are gone. :( Golden, not as in profitable... But as in connecting with people, discussing things, making downtime less boring, etc. Tons of people trying to hustle, now it's just a few and no ones really being public about it.
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Personally I look at that as basically a good thing. It's a positive indicator to me that the space has evolved toward a reasonably high barrier to entry and high level of expertise requirement and thus there's a good chance that success, far from guaranteed, will actually be defensible and sustainable.

The old wickedfire days kind of remind of the current crypto mania. A few young bright kids finding fast money online, attracting legions of other young kids that want to get in on the bandwagon but mostly lose money.
 
Does anyone know what happened to the owner of wickedfire?

Thanks for pointing me to r/juststart

Sadly, I have to agree on the sad state of IM forums.
 
Buildersociety is the only forum worth looking at. That and r/learnprogramming for me
 
I'm a member of STM. StackThatMoney is the best for paid traffic. Facebook/Adwords/Pops/Native they've got you covered.

In terms of leaks/marketing/SEO there isn't much there.
 
Any time I see someone defending a paywall on a community, all I can think of is Scientology.

You know that the person talking knows it's crock of crap and they got taken for a ride, but it's far too late to admit it because too much money has been invested (lost). So they defend the paywall instead so they don't deal with cognitive dissonance.

The rest of us have the exact same information that's already been leaked out by members of the community. Turns out it's either about some alien overlord planting souls into volcanos to atom bomb them or it's the same regurgitated information from other forums and blogs.
 
Samwise89 said:
Any time I see someone defending a paywall on a community, all I can think of is Scientology.

You know that the person talking knows it's crock of crap and they got taken for a ride, but it's far too late to admit it because too much money has been invested (lost). So they defend the paywall instead so they don't deal with cognitive dissonance.

The rest of us have the exact same information that's already been leaked out by members of the community. Turns out it's either about some alien overlord planting souls into volcanos to atom bomb them or it's the same regurgitated information from other forums and blogs.
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While I'm obviously biased, I promise you you're not getting the information we're sharing anywhere else... because it's specific to members sites.
 
I've just come from BHW, I liked BHW but got banned for no reason. Literally no reason, appealed it by their support and got told "we have no proof you were the original account owner and it got flagged for spam", then the admin started to ask me about my website and asking where I got the theme from........

I was on there since 2010, so I joined this forum.
 
For nostalgia's sake I just checked WickedFire and decided to open the most recently commented topic.
https://www.wickedfire.com/2273195-post102.html

nope-badger.gif

Mistakes were made.
 
Looking to see if there are any new dominant prevailing opinions on best paid membership/forums/groups that anyone would recommend?

I've been in SEO for 8 years and have been primarily a "monkey-see monkey-do" type experimenter. I also spend a good amount of time in Facebook groups and of course, Builder Society.

My corporate job is having us set education/learning goals and I'm thinking I might be able to get some $ behind this, so looking for other paid/membership communities others have found particularly useful in regards to staying on the bleeding edge of SEO.

(Traffic Think Tank & Online Genius' are two I've been recommended so far)
 
I've watched some videos from Income School and I do like their stuff. It's honest and straightforward and looks like effective tactics to me. I do a lot of what they preach, so I was pleased to hear them talk about those things. I'm considering joining their paid group $399 (?), which is a paid forum with some sparring with them. Not sure if I'm the focus group though. I think it's more newb oriented.
 
bernard said:
I've watched some videos from Income School and I do like their stuff. It's honest and straightforward and looks like effective tactics to me. I do a lot of what they preach, so I was pleased to hear them talk about those things. I'm considering joining their paid group $399 (?), which is a paid forum with some sparring with them. Not sure if I'm the focus group though. I think it's more newb oriented.
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You're not in the focus group. I've been inside the course. I manage to see / log in / download every single course that hits the market thanks to knowing people. The Income School one is not for you (not you in general, you as in @bernard specifically).

All it boils down to is "here's an outline of stuff to do by the day." It goes up to like 60 days or something then it's "publish publish publish."

It's literally a paint-by-numbers framework for newbies to follow to remove uncertainty. You're paying for someone who's done it before to pat you on the back and say "don't worry, just keep following the plan." Meanwhile they say on their Youtube videos that most people won't make it. So that tells you that their plan itself isn't bulletproof.

The plan is literally like:
  1. Choose a niche and register a domain
  2. Install Wordpress and these plugins and our theme
  3. Do keyword research and come up with article ideas based on it
  4. Write your first post.
  5. Sign up for a YouTube channel and set it up.
  6. Write your second post.
  7. Create a video based on your first post.
  8. Write your third post.
  9. Write your e-book that you'll sell for $15 in your sidebar.
  10. Write your fourth post.
It's like that (zero exaggeration) and they provide guidance on how much money you should expect to make by day 30, day 60, day 100, etc. They celebrate "Pizza Day" when someone makes their first $5 in revenue. It's newbie central. And they recommend zero link building.

If you watch their Youtube videos you end up hearing everything that's in the course. I think they even have one that goes ever the course. I enjoy their videos. They're one of the few on there actually talking about SEO with a decent production value, even if it's on the baby level.

Others may enjoy joining their program, especially those unsure how to proceed and want LITERAL hand holding. You'd be wasting your money.
 
harrytwatter said:
looking for other paid/membership communities others have found particularly useful in regards to staying on the bleeding edge of SEO
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This is the problem ( that I highlighted above ).

People on the bleeding edge of anything don't talk about it.

The ones that do, stumbled there by accident or chance and then blab about it and have it ruined within months.

The OG's that got there by pure "doing" ain't gonna give it out on no forum or paid slack chat. Trust me on this.

BTW, I am in Online Geniuses and there is nothing going on there. Like you, I set out to find new communities in hopes of just connecting with people and I have been through everything except Traffic Think Tank and there is nothing out there worth getting connected to. Again I havent done TTT, but everything else is just nothing.
 
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