Posted by Jason on October 25th, 2006 — in Forums, Online Business, Search Engines
There was a time a couple of short years ago that asking what the importance of your Alexa ranking in a forum would get a million responses that it was worthless and all of those people were right. I then ignored those discussions over the years because they were all exactly the same. That was until a recent thread on Digital Point Forums where another new webmaster posed the question and although it elicited many of the same “It is easily manipulated” responses, there were a few dissenting voices. Now being used to post count padding, I wouldn’t normally have paid attention but those denying the ability to manipulate it are people who I regard as pretty up to date and knowledgeable in these areas.
So being drawn into the thread I decided to post my same response from a few years ago outlining all the reasons it could bot be trusted for rankings under 100k. I figured maybe these usually informed posters just didn’t realize the wide range of tools out there for changing your ranking drastically. The response back was a simple and plain one: If those tools work so well even now, prove it and manipulate your own rank.
Now it is really common for discussions in forums to break down when people just keep saying prove it but in this case I felt it was a legitimate point. It was so easy when I previously changed it, it would only take a week or two to do the necessary tests with minimal effort and be crowned king of that particular thread. I love proving peoples wild accusations based on myth wrong so this was a perfect opportunity.
So the experiment begins. The first step to any manipulation is to just install the toolbar on a few computers, preferably with different IP address’s. I only have two that fall into that category so I put the bar on my home computer and my work computer. I don’t normally put what is basically “spyware” on my working computer but I thought it would be beneficial to the challenge and the small tweak of the firewall would be worth it. Normally doing this and setting the soon to be manipulated site as the home page causes enough refreshing to give you a huge boost. After all, each install in the old days represented thousands if not tens of thousands of computers.
Then I pulled out the big guns. I rooted around on my hard drive and found an old Alexa booster program and set the machine going. I’m worthless when it comes to programming but as far as I can tell, it uses a proxy system to access your site thousands of times through the Alexa toolbar, “spoofing” a unique visitor each time and racking up the brownie points. Just in case that particular program was blacklisted by Alexa, I also found a few more boosters via eBay and installed those. I couldn’t wait to manipulate the ranking down to like 35K and show how ridiculous Alexa is as a ranking system.
Now normally I would see results at the next update which used to happen every Sunday night/Monday morning. I’m not sure when it actually happened but before I knew it, this site which had a starting point of 402k rose to 403k at the next update. To be honest I was expecting for it to drop by about 250k in one go like the old days so I figured the update didn’t take my work into account YET. So I patiently waited for another update and it went up again to around 404k. Now this was getting ridiculous as it seemed all my efforts had absolutely no effect. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that it actually settled back down to around 350K. You would be tempted to say that a 50K+ drop was phenomenal but when you are in the 400k range it is pretty much meaningless. To this point I still haven’t seen a drop down past the 100k mark which would have normally happened within a single update.
The testing I did convinced me that Alexa is not as easily manipulated as it used to be. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be able to be manipulated at all. One area where there does seem to be inconsistencies still is the fact that webmasters tend to have the toolbar installed in way bigger numbers then the average Joe. This is turn means that webmaster resources like directories tend to have highly inflated Alexa values. In the above example, the 400K site is actually a very successful site of mine that pulls in huge visitors and 6 figures a year. In contrast, if you are going by Alexa numbers alone, you would think that this blog has significantly more traffic and potential for revenue. This blog, however, is nowhere near the numbers nor success of the other site. What this means is although Alexa can be off when it comes to the reach, it is still a good comparison tool for sites in the same industry.
So if the above is actually true and I am of course now one of the believers, is the previous myth that Google uses a bit of Alexa ranking in its algo still so dismissible? If it is no longer so easy to manipulate and the only existing problem is comparing sites in different industries, it’s not a stretch that Google would use it, even if as a very minor part of the algo.
If anyone has a manipulation tool they believe still works, please email or post a link in the comments and I will definitely give it a try. I will only accept the methods though as anyone just posting, “It is easy to manipulate” will be ignored since I truly believe Alexa has either achieved a critical point when it comes to number of installs or have limited the number of same range IPs it will accept as votes.
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Posted by Jason on July 7th, 2006 — in Forums
I have seen a growing trend lately of forums acquiring other forums and unlike the old days where they would redirect to the new one or just call it a sister forum, they are just merging the posts and members. One that has been using this technique with a great deal of success is Admin Fusion. They have been acquiring similar forums like mad and it has really expanded their market share and livened up their forum. I witnessed the original merger firsthand and I really was amazed how fluid it was. I think there was one issue with any active polls not working but that was quite minor. Here is the the notification from their most recent acquisition around a week ago:
yfs1,
We have done it again, AdminFusion is merging with another forum admin community! We wanted to notify you in case you have an account at both forums, www.whichbb.com and www.adminfusion.com. If you do have an account at both forums, check these accounts to make sure that the email addresses are the same. If they are not, change them so that they are. Please do this by this Sunday, June 9th at the latest.
If you have not yet heard about the merger, you may read this thread for more information:
http://www.adminfusion.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8363
We are really looking forward to this and hope you are as well. Stop by and let us know what you think 
Regards,
AdminFusion Staff
I really like this strategy and I think its the future. Right now you can pick just about any niche and there are hundreds if not thousands of forums on the subject. God forbid you take a look at the SEO/Webmaster world where there are hundreds of thousands active forums.
The old trend of successful forums buying little ones to try to get their members to migrate was one that just couldn’t last in today’s market. By almost merging the forum by force, you breathe a lot of life into the existing forum. On the technical side, merging two forums couldn’t be easier these days especially if you are using vBulletin. There are even a growing number of merging option for phpBB now emerging. It has prompted me to make up a short list of related forums to make offers on as I see it money well spent. After all, the real value in a forum is not it’s PR or number of pages indexed but its member base.
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Posted by Jason on June 1st, 2006 — in Forums
There is no shortage of forums online due to the ease of starting one. Most hosts have cPanel which allows you to practically hit a button and automatically start a forum on your existing site. A successful forum brings in massive amounts of visitors with the hope being they are funnelled to your site in order to make a purchase. In theory this sounds like a great way to market your site but the reality can be much different for the majority of people. The truth is, building a successful forum and maintaining it is very hard work. With so many options out there, its easy for one mistake to lead to a mass exodus and leave you with an empty forum, nearly having to start from scratch. It’s even more difficult for brand new forums as there is a chicken and the egg scenario where many people won’t post in an inactive forum and you are bound to have an inactive forum if nobody posts. I have a collection of methods which can be used to either start your forum off or jump start a stale one.
Start an AdWords Campaign
Upside
If you word your ads correctly, you will be getting very targeted and focused visitors. These are the ones that tend to post on a first visit as they probably have a question which your ad enticed them to ask. They are also natural visitors which can be fairly hard to reproduce.
Downside
These can be very expensive visitors. There is also a potential for getting your ad campaign wrong which can mean lots of clicks but little interaction. Also, AdWords visitors will expect a moderately busy forum and a quick reply to their answer. If they don’t get it they will probably move on to the next forum pretty quickly
Low Down
AdWords is most effective for moderately active communities. Using it to start a forum or jump start an existing one is a risky move financially. Better to save this technique for the later stages where you will get more bang for the buck.
One on One Post Exchange
Upside
If you make an agreement with someone that if they post 100 times on your forum, you will post 100 times on their forum, you pretty much know what you are getting. If using this method, be sure to read some of their posts to get an idea on quality. Because this is a 1 to 1 situation, they will put a little more effort into their posts seeing as how they want the same. It’s better to set up a few of these at lower thresholds to try to add variety. You can make these deals either direct through the other persons forum or in Buy/Sell/Trade sections of most webmaster forums.
Downside
The variety of posts can suffer a bit in a 1 to 1 relationship. Most forums can’t get a proper jump start from only a few new posters. Also, setting up these arrangements can be quite time consuming and you risk the other person losing interest and having to constantly start over.
Low Down
This is a great way in the early stages to get quality posts for no money. It also does well to inject new blood and ideas into a stale forum. This is one that should always be going although mostly as a supplement to other techniques.
Post Exchange Program
Upside
These programs are pretty easy. You basically put a piece of code onto your own forum which logs when people post (other members) and every time you post on a forum in the program, you get a point. That point hopefully gets others to post in your forum. The best part of this type of program is the variety of people that post. You also can return posts in a forum that interests you, which is easy if they have a lot of members. The best example I have seen so far of this type of program is Admin Fusion
Downside
Some people will try to exploit the system so the quality of posts can be a little lower. At times, some posters may not actually have an interest in the subject matter so getting them to engage real users isn’t always easy. The best programs use not only a reporting system to weed out the bad posts but if someone benefits a lot without giving much, their forum is hidden on the list. Otherwise, you may be subject to the negative aspects in the downside
Low Down
I definitely suggest this method as an ongoing one. It is a great method as you can post on others forums in your own time and all the posts received back are spread out over a period of time.
Paid Posting
Upside
This is probably the easiest of methods as it requires no effort on your part. You pay a posting company to do the work, they register a preset number of usernames and your forum suddenly appears busy. They can even spread out the posts over a number of days or weeks. It’s hard to make a suggestion as these companies come and go like no-body’s business. The best way to find one is in the Buy/Sell/Trade sections of Webmasters forum. You can usually buy a tester package to judge quality
Downside
Out of all the options presented, this one usually generates the lowest quality of posts. If you choose the wrong company, you may even find yourself deleting most of them. Also, because there is money involved, you can’t sustain this method forever so you will need natural posters to mix with the paid posts. Lastly, paid posters tend to love Introductions and 5 word posts so be sure to set the rules before payment.
Low Down
It’s a great way to rejuvenate or start a forum but use sparingly. Too much sudden activity can be spotted as fake so if you decide to use this once in a while, be sure to specify a longer time frame for completion so you get the most benefit from your money.
Hopefully these few techniques get you started in your quest to build a successful and profitable forum. It is not an easy thing to do and none of these techniques guarantee any level of success at all. In fact, the most important parts of a forum are things you can control from the beginning. Make sure it is user friendly, on a topic you have a passion for, and that it isn’t already an over saturated market. Bring something new and unique to the table and you may just succeed!
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