Part 5 of the AM Getting Started Series

Okay, now you're dabbling in some sites and know the game where you use free blogs as testbeds first, then subdomains on a generic domain, and then their own domain.

Still, however, after the expense and time, you might not be making more than perhaps $500 a month, and you might not have a lot of free time.

Here's where I recommend a lot of analysis. What's working? What's not? Can you fix what's not? Is the site attractive enough? Does it load fast enough? Does it have the bandwidth capacity to handle the load? Does it get enough clicks on ads? Does it have compelling graphics and content? Is it more than just words -- do you have pictures and videos? Does the site warrant the need to switch it from blog to forum? Get busy looking at these things because there's answers in there in the data.

Now look at what moves up near the top 3 pages on the social bookmarking sites and which you actually feel compelled to click on. Analyze those sites very carefully -- did they use their own domain, do they have more than one kind of ad, etc.? The ones with more than one kind of ad are more than likely an AM-er, even if part-time. Now, can you bring up sites similar to this?

Now look at finding volunteer moderators and volunteer article writers on your forum sites. Start by looking at your forum users. Reward them. Private message them and say great job when they write a good forum message that really knocks your socks off. Ask the ones who come back regularly, and who can reasonably write a good forum message, and who seem to be a generally nice person even when spat upon, to become a forum moderator. Grant them just a little bit of privilege in the system, one at a time, and see how well they do. If they don't make the cut, say, "Sorry, we had a tough choice to make on who to pick for forum moderators, and you didn't make the cut at this time. However, every year we look again, and we'll keep you in mind if you would like. Just reply yes and we'll put you down on the list to review for next year." From your forum moderators, then begin to encourage them to write articles for the front page. Eventually from the cream of your crop in a forum, you can grant manager of the moderators privilege so that the moderators interact with this single person, and that single person is the only one you deal with. This leaves you out of the forum except with occasional work, and you get the ad revenue. Now, as an added bonus, surprise your moderators at Christmas time with a small PayPal payment gift from a portion of your ad revenue. Meanwhile, don't let on what you're doing -- that you're using them to bring in more ad revenue. Never mention one word about ad revenue, or how wealthy you're getting from the site. Never refer to these article writers or forum moderators as "sheeple" -- love them to death because they are your bread and butter. And remember -- people want to visit a forum where everyone gets along and there's no flaming, rude talk, or being called stupid. Sure, accidental flare-ups can happen and they need to be lightly mitigated, but the serious infractions must be dealt with harshly, including banning IP addresses if necessary.

As well, once you get rolling, you can pay others to generate content -- there are many freelance writing sites on the web.

You can also begin to seek out advice on SEO and even pay small sums (no more than $100) for whitehat SEO advice from a couple different guys on the web.

You can also learn to improve your site design skills to give it a more modern look but yet in a way that doesn't slow the web page down or look funky on different kinds of browsers. Remember -- most of your users will be Windows users, then Mac, then Linux. You need to be able to accommodate all of them, and that takes web page testing with the most commonly used browser on each platform. And if you are stuck on site design, outsource it, pay for some advice, or purchase a good book and study.