Personal sites for my members?

**Nick R** · 11-12-2008, 04:30 PM

Hey everybody

As some of you may already know, my forum is for a type of pet parrot. I now have close to 400 members and 20,000 posts in 9 months. IMO, the activity on my forum is good considering the lack of vastness of my target audience in addition to my site's young age.

I'd say that about 95% of all of my members actually own the parrot that my forum is about. For those that don't, they do own some type of pet.

Well I recently got the idea to offer my members a personal "pet site" of their own, hosted on my site. In addition to the domain for the specific parrot, I also own www.pets-galore.net (which currently is an empty old forum). So I have two domain names to offer.
I would offer my members the choice of Joomla or Wordpress or any other common CMS to host their content and they could setup however they want and use it as they please. For example, a member "Linda" could have "Linda's Pet Site" where she could have pages describing each of her pets. She could use it as a static website or a blog. She could also post pictures and add updates, etc.
I'm sure you guys get my drift by now.

So I have a few questions:

1) Do you even think this is a good idea? If you were able to offer the same sort of thing to your members, would you? What would your thoughts and plans/ideas be?

2) I definitely would not offer this for free. What sort of pricing do you think is low-cost to my members yet profitable for me? Not big-time profit but enough to save some for future investments as well as pocket some?
My first instinct was a $10 setup fee and then $15 per month, and they would get the first month free. Do you think that is suitable for what I am desiring in terms of profit?
I'm really bad at pricing so don't take my price ideas too seriously there. LOL

Any other comments?

Thanks in advance for ANY advice you can offer

**Rocket 442** · 11-12-2008, 05:38 PM

That's a tough call.

15/month sounds high, although if you're hosting it, and install the CMS for them, then it might not be too bad. Another idea is to have an advertisement for your site on all of their sites. Not only is it just good targeted advertising for you, they probably wouldn't mind at all.
You could also do some google ads or something on each site, but that is up to you.

**Brandon Sheley** · 11-12-2008, 07:08 PM

Have you thought about setting up a WPMU script? it's a multy user wordpress script.. It would would out great for what you want to offer IMO
it's what I'm using on the sheley.org domain..

just an idea

**Caddyman** · 11-13-2008, 04:05 AM

yeah using WPMU would save you lots of work, and be much easier for the EU to handle...

**ArnyVee** · 11-13-2008, 05:20 AM

I was going to suggest WPMU as well.

It's something that will be part of the 3rd site in the WDB Family of Sites

I'm planning on doing the same things. Offering each person their own personal 'site' (although this is more like a traditional blog, but you know) and even offer them the opportunity to get back some of their 'sign up fee' (mine is probably going to be about $10 startup and that's it, at least that's what I'm thinking for now) by adding their own Google code for them into the ads. But, the other ads will be mine and coded into each 'site'. This way, I can cover the costs and time I spend helping them out.

**Soliloquy** · 11-13-2008, 09:31 AM

I want to do something similar but with each user on their own domain...

**Nick R** · 11-13-2008, 11:41 AM

So you'd sorta be providing hosting?

I am going to provide each user their own subdomain.... I think. I'm still not sure.

**Caddyman** · 11-13-2008, 02:25 PM

wpmu allows subdomain setup like

yoursite.com is your main site

lucy.yourdomain.com

mybirdisthebest.yourdomain.com

john.youdomain.com

etc.....

OR

yourdomain.com/lucy/

yourdomain.com/johh/

etc....

**Nick R** · 11-14-2008, 04:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Caddyman

wpmu allows subdomain setup like

yoursite.com is your main site

lucy.yourdomain.com

mybirdisthebest.yourdomain.com

john.youdomain.com

etc.....

OR

yourdomain.com/lucy/

yourdomain.com/johh/

etc....

Yes, I know

But thanks anyways

But I am unsure how I would implement my ads into everybody's site automatically without having to edit each one, one at a time...? Can anybody help with that? Thanks

**Caddyman** · 11-14-2008, 04:24 AM

There is a wpmu advertising plugin that you can use to disperse ads on the sites. might take a little work setting up but once you are done it is pretty easy to manage....

**Brandon Sheley** · 11-14-2008, 05:33 AM

it takes all of 3 mins to add your banners to the style

then your done

**ArnyVee** · 11-14-2008, 05:48 AM

Brandon, is that using a mod to the WPMU admin or something?

**Brandon Sheley** · 11-14-2008, 10:59 AM

nope, just like editing any wordpress style

**ArnyVee** · 11-14-2008, 11:52 AM

But, he's referring to 'hard coding' Google ads to each of the member's blogs within WPMU. Is that all handled from a single point (admin)? Or, would you have to go to each blog and place the code in it?

**Nick R** · 11-14-2008, 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ArnyVee

But, he's referring to 'hard coding' Google ads to each of the member's blogs within WPMU. Is that all handled from a single point (admin)? Or, would you have to go to each blog and place the code in it?

Additionally, would I have to do it for *each and every* style? I'm adding as many styles as I can so that members can have a variety to choose from.
If I'm gonna have to edit each theme, screw the ads. LOL

However, I did realize that if I'm going to charge members to have a blog, then Adsense is not necessary.

**Yogesh Sarkar** · 11-14-2008, 08:40 PM

Why not simply add vbblog to your forum and let members use them?

I mean getting a subdomain based hosting for US$ 15 a month is daylight robbery when people can easily get their own hosting and domain for less than 5 dollars a month one can get free subdomain and even domain based blogs for free!

**Nick R** · 11-15-2008, 06:08 AM

I decided I'm only going to charge $4.99 per month and that's it.

At this time, I don't think vBBlog is the best option. I prefer Wordpress anyways.

**Brandon Sheley** · 11-15-2008, 09:37 PM

oh, you want the members to be able to add their own ads to the blogs your providing?
The only way I can think of is maybe in a text widget? then they could add it wherever widgets are allowed.