Author: Joe Whyte

My second interview in my elite retreat interview series is with the well known social netowrking expert Lee Dodd who has achieved much success with sprint forums and is a current speaker at elite retreat San Fransisco in march. Lee’s expertise is essential for anyone considering creating and marketing a forum. Be sure to check out lee’s business bushido site to learn more about lee.

Joe: What do you plan on speaking about specifically?

Lee: I plan on speaking about the growth potential of online communities in the first segment. I will basically outline the benefits of online communities, how to monetize them, dive a bit into SEO, and give a solid picture of the growth and earnings potential. The second segment will be dedicated to my tactics of both buying and selling web real estate.

I have bought and sold more than 60 web properties (websites) over the past 2-3 years. I have spent $xxx,xxx in acquisitions yearly. I have learned much through all of these transactions and will show our attendees how to buy and sell effectively without getting burned. There is plenty of money to be made doing this very thing. You can read more about me and the other speaks here:

Joe: What kind of real world value can attendees take from YOUR seminar?

Lee: I think the attendees will walk away with a solid understanding and plan of attack that will help them achieve the very goals they came with. The leadership will guide them through the EXACT steps it will take them to get from their POINT A to their POINT B. They certainly won’t get fluff or sales pitches, just the hard facts they need to succeed in their business.

Joe: How did you make the sprint forum so popular?

Lee: The site really grew in popularity as I continually added free tools and resources for the users. We have a free upload tool, one of only 3 or so on the web for Sprint phones, we have a huge wallpaper gallery with free wallpapers to download, we provide custom graphic and ringtone creation for free, we have user blogs, and so much more. As I built the new fun content, growth continued at a steady pace. Things like SEO and branding really took care of itself at that point.

Joe: For our clients and viewers can you tell us the secret to success for making a forum popular?

Lee: I will continue to share that my main secret (and there are others which will be discussed at the Elite Retreat ) is creating useful and unique content. This doesn’t have to be written content necessarily, but rather tools, games, video, audio, or some other type of valuable content to your userbase. Having this in place will bring the traffic required to see your community grow.

Joe: Can you tell us about one of your most notable client’s and what you where able to do for them?

Lee: I have worked with a variety of clients and their forums. The first one that comes to mind is a woman that runs a large community that is health related. I was able in one session to give her a plan of attack that took her earnings from approximately $1,700 a month to more than $4,500 a month. It didn’t require much work either as it was something she had implemented in a matter of hours.

Joe: In your opinion what is the best formula to monetizing a site for maximum ROI?

Lee: Depending on the niche you are in, you will want to focus your monetization efforts in a specific area. For instance, if you are in the technology sector you would want to begin with monetizing your traffic through CPA offers and CPC (Adsense or YPN) networks. As traffic grows, you would want to build up your private advertisers as well. To maximize ROI, the key is to maximize eyeballs. Ask yourself if you are doing everything you can to bring in the most traffic to your site, and then once they arrive are you doing the best you can to convert them in to revenue.

Joe: Who is the best web hosting company in the world?

Lee: Lunar Pages of course! ;-)

Thanks for entertianing that question Lee. I have been very impressed with what you have done with sprint forums and spending 20 minutes speaking with you about social networking and marketing could truly increase someones online efforts and maximize their ROI. Have a great trip to San Fransisco.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 11:26 am and is filed under Interviews, Jabber, SEO, Sales & Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed . Comments are currently closed.