I’ve always been a one for forums. Maybe its the sense of atmosphere created by like-minded individuals who share the same passions and goals, or maybe its because between yourself and your computer – its a big internet world out there – so the extra companionship can’t hurt along the way.
Anyway, there have only been 2 main young entrepreneurship forums that I have ever frequented. The first – YoungEntrepreneur.com – was a fantastic place to start learning but as you grow maturer and start developing the knowledge yourself, the constant questions of “How Can I Make Money Online” start to drive you round the bend. I do pop in there now and again to share my knowledge (which is something I try and do a lot anyway), but its moved down my favourites list.
The second was and is YoungGoGetter. I was invited there quite a few months back by one of the co-founders Travis. Since then, I’ve struck up some really good friendships and have been constantly impressed by the amounts of knowledge most of the members have.
However best of all, I love the sens of belonging I get whenever I log in to the forum. As only 1 of 20 or so active posters I feel that I really have a place in the circle of young go getters (and I just hope that this doesn’t change as the site starts to rapidly expand).
Back to the point, lately the site has gone through a major revamp. They call it Version 3.0. I would tend to describe the site as bloggified and as you can tell by reading these words – I love a good ole blog! At the moment, Travis and Eric (the other co-founder) havn’t said too much about their “wonder coder” who seems to be a guy called Brandon.
Before the site had really annoying iFrames, where some failed to load for me altogether. Now the website is more streamlined, quicker and more aesthetically pleasing. On top of this, there is even more community power with blog posts announcing Entreprenews, Podcasts and Interviews.
In short the site will continue to be my number 1 entrepreneur forum and I wish Travis and Eric the best of luck in its expansion and the eventual domination of the entrepreneurial market! Congratulations on Version 3 guys – its fab!
“Small Business, Big Vision provides a framework for you to unleash your driven and relentless passion to achieve unprecedented growth.”
Thanks a ton Adnan. It’s great to hear that you like the new site. I think you hit the nail right on the head when you described the concentrated group of members we have.
We’re definitely nowhere near as big as YE in members or traffic, but that doesn’t matter anymore.
We tried to one-up them with the last version and paid the price by losing sight of the most important thing, our members and how they interact.
That’s all we care about now. Hopefully we are able to grow in memberbase but I can guarantee you that you will never see a spam post or one-post-members that ask “what type of online business should I start?” on YGG.
No problem Travis. Actually as of late I’ve started seeing a major increase in the amount of forum posts there are. Your community is starting to build up nicely and I just wish I had more time like you and Eric to keep in touch with everybody there!
Lol, actually I was also gonna ask about the SPAM on Vanilla boards. Is it easy to manage? Can you delete spamming accounts straight from the admin panel?
We have never had one single spam post since we switched to Vanilla.
We have kept it so that we have to approve every forum applicant and are usually able to do this within minutes or hours after they apply.
Every now and then we’ll have a forum applicant that is clearly a spambot, so we just deny it membership and it doesn’t have the opportunity to post, like some vbulletin and phpBB forums automatically enable them to do.
Hey Adnan! Thanks for the encouraging words. Looks like I’ve come here after Travis and he’s taken the words right out of my mouth.
I can’t believe how many wonderful friends and more recently, business partners I’ve cultivated from YGG. It really is the most ambitious, courteous, life-loving group of entrepreneur’s online. And as you said, the amount of knowledge from everyone there is staggering. Between the +/- 20 super active members I don’t think there’s a single thing missing as far as skill set, especially with the recent addition of Brandon, our uber-programmer.
I hope you find the time to visit more, the empty seat really makes a difference. Take care buddy!
Travis – Im going to have a look at Vanilla this weekend and could well be making the switch. It looks attractive too! PHPBB is so vulnerable to spammers its a wonder why they’re still used!
And no problemo Eric! Yeah I saw your purchasing of websites and good luck with it. I would like to collude but I havn’t got much time any more, but I hope I can build my internet empire with you guys in the extremely near future.
Lol I think Brandon is the missing piece in our puzzle – we always wanted a programmer, lets just hope he’s willing to help us out on a few of our Group Projects.
I’ll try and pay more visits, but congrats again on your success!