Hey,
I don't want to take full credit for this method because it is a spin off something a friend of mine did a while back, but if you work on this everyday for about 30 minutes (maybe a little more at first to get everything set up), you could easily go over $100 daily.

You will need to be able to edit and customize any free forum platform. I like SMF but you could easily do phpBB, yabb, myBB... whatever floats your boat.

So what you are doing is contacting schools and PTAs/PTSAs and asking them if they would like to hire you to create a teacher-student homework help and assignment website (call it whatever you like). But basically what it is, is a forum where each teacher has their own forums and subforums for each period. Then students can go on and check the teachers forum for assignments and to ask both the teacher and peers for advice and help regarding homework, projects, and class related information (like they could post lecture note etc.) It's also a great way for parents to see what their children are learning in class and it keeps them involved which has been proven to increase academic performance. By making schools these websites, you can make good money and actually help people instead of taking advantage of them like in most black hat methods (this is not a black hat method though)

So how do you go about doing this? Well it's actually easy! First, you need to contact school the schools PTA or Administrators (PTA is better because they are usually the people who would pay for such a thing.) So you should start out local, go to your local High Schools and Jr High/Middle Schools (Elementary schools don't really need this but it doesn't hurt to try.)

So just send them and email and tell them what you offer and see if they're interested. If they aren't then move on. If you run out of schools to go to, don't worry, I've got you covered!
http://www.newsweek.com/feature/2010...ools/list.html

That has all the high schools you could ever want. Just go to Digital Point and go to the service section and hire some people to get 50 pta emails for $1. The more you send these offers to the more will convert. Don't expect a high conversion rate but if you send out an email to 50 schools you should get maybe 5 "yes"s and that $500 at least. I know what you're thinking: "wait, how did you get $500, and what am I supposed to say when I offer this to them? Don't worry, I will answer that right now.

You can charge as much as you'd like but I recommend $90-$100. This is a very reasonable price for such a serviced. Most schools will have their own websites and hosting but you can sell them additional hosting for this if you want to make extra cash. You can either do it under a reseller hosting account and charge them a reoccurring monthly fee or you can just sell them hostgator affiliate hosting or something like that. That will bring in a lot of extra money. Hostgator affiliate will bring you about a 100% short term profit increase, but reseller hosting will give you a steady income and in bring in way more money in the future. It's up to you.

So what are you supposed to say? Just email them and be honest. Tell them what your offering and tell them the benefits. Then show them you low prices and make a little nice professional looking website and see how they respond. Tweak it accordingly to how you see fit.

Now the only issue is actually making the site. The information you will need is all teachers names, emails, and what their class periods are. Then make the forums by teachers name and make subforums of the periods. You can either put them into sections by grade or subject. Example:

Category: Science Teachers
Forum: Ms. BHW
Subforums: Period 1 Period 2 Period 3 etc.
(create the teachers accounts and make them moderators of their own forums)

then leave it up to them to register the students because it's to much work. Just say it's for legal privacy issues that you can't deal with student info or some BS like that. Then just show them how to use it (make a PDF guide) show them how to register students, parents, new teachers, administrtakes me about half an hour to set something like that up so if you do 1 a day (30 min) that's at least $100 a day. Also, don't forget to add creative touches like student chat forums or something like that to make it more successful, think about it, you are actually helping the community (kind of).

Black Hat Twist: I'm not going to say anything specific, but you have a lot of teachers names and emails....

Ok enjoy! and good luck making money

haha just awesome! nice twist and easy to do! thanks alot dude =)

also like your blackhat idea in it

Wow, a nice "think out of the box" method, thnx for this, the price about your services i a OTO or recurring, meaning the schools have to pay every month to access the forums?

lol that would be mean, i guess he rather go for 100$ for a forum and leave them alone but you can be their service person for bugs or updates or SEO ;-)

Originally Posted by THUNDERELVI

Wow, a nice "think out of the box" method, thnx for this, the price about your services i a OTO or recurring, meaning the schools have to pay every month to access the forums?

you could have them pay you monthly or a one time payment. I suggest one time but it is flexible to change as you see fit. Try some stuff out and if it works expand, if it doesn't, try something else.

Do you think I should register a single domain and have a subdomain for every school, or what?

nice idea, i like it

shared hosting would be best in this situation as you could just ftp it wherever you want without having to get all that ftp information and installation everytime you use the hostgator reseller stuff

cool methods thanks

Originally Posted by mistablackhat00

Do you think I should register a single domain and have a subdomain for every school, or what?

Either one is fine.

Great idea! I like this method!

Originally Posted by THUNDERELVI

Wow, a nice "think out of the box" method, thnx for this, the price about your services i a OTO or recurring, meaning the schools have to pay every month to access the forums?

This is a nice idea and I don't think you should underplay the fact that you are helping. I think your price is low. This should be sellable in the $250 - 500 range pretty easily. Plus you could work out a hosting/support package at say $59 + without problem.

Don't undersell yourself!

Originally Posted by dgwreg

This is a nice idea and I don't think you should underplay the fact that you are helping. I think your price is low. This should be sellable in the $250 - 500 range pretty easily. Plus you could work out a hosting/support package at say $59 + without problem.

Don't undersell yourself!

I agree. Most public schools are probably always in a short supply of money in general but they are used to being a bureaucracy machine and used to paying contractor rates to many contractors that the schools employs for one time or ongoing work. One trick you should learn is that "working" for the goverment (city / state / federal) is great because they always pay. If you get into monthly with a school it could go on forever, even if the forum is not being used anymore. Some school paper pusher will not pay much attention to a revolving $59 charge for "homework services"

None of the schools I saw on that site or any other site listed their email address...they either had a contact us form or nothing.

So how are you getting them, or are you just using the contact us form?

or give them a call =)

Awesome stuff man, it's nice to see that it doesnt have to all be blackhat. You can actually help out too.

Originally Posted by YoungGuns

None of the schools I saw on that site or any other site listed their email address...they either had a contact us form or nothing.

So how are you getting them, or are you just using the contact us form?

i am going to use this method, i thought of this before...i will personally just call and make meetings with them, email, meh low success rate i want converts, slap some adsense/school cpa on the forums, charge a monthly fee, nice income can be made here.

If anyones interested you will obviously need to come up with following

-your company name - ca be a subsidiary of your web design/seo company should be inc or llc
- def have one COMPLETELY done with all functions, even if its a demo to "demonstrate"
- have an easy payment plan with auto bills no one time fee def monthly
- WEAR A SUIT AND TIE
- Cold Call Script

pretty much it....

Originally Posted by YoungGuns

None of the schools I saw on that site or any other site listed their email address...they either had a contact us form or nothing.

So how are you getting them, or are you just using the contact us form?

that's why you pay people to find the ones with the emails. They actually probably do have an email if you look harder. Don't do the ones at the top because those are the most prestigious public schools in the country. Do some random ones in the middle. Those are the ones you need to look at.

As several people have pointed out too, you can call or personally contact them. This will probably result in a higher conversion rate but it will be more work and it will take longer.

Cool idea none the less... thanks.

nice idea .. anyone try this??

Hmm, I am def trying this out once I have everything planned out. I'm going to create a website with my contact info and such, which will be placed at the bottom of every forum I'll create.

The one thing that I'm wondering about is how much to charge. What do you suggest to do about pricing?

this is a good idea, and you could actually offer this same service to many other things besides just schools.

Wow great method!

Won't it be a bit off-putting that the teachers have to make accounts for everybody? And if you make it so that anyone can register you'll get kids/teenagers flaming with fresh accounts and not getting caught.

This method has huge potential. However, I think some of the definite concerns that will come are the following:


1) Security issues:
Such as keeping child molesting creeps at bay with some sort of super tight registration process.

2) Moderation:
Naked images, Fake profiles, Profanity & Slander. How will this be managed (more importantly how will this be explained and demonstrated to the school)

If the responsibility of managing the site is delegated to the teacher/school for 'legal reasons', who's going to manage the site/forum and how do you convince the school this is worth their while financially? As far stretched as teachers are for the pay they receive, is it realistic to assume they will take on yet another 'job'?

*Edit: True if you can get parents involved you may have an answer there,

Again, i think this idea has great potential for both schools and the one who can pull this off, but honestly, until these basic questions have been answered, I don't see how this will be sold.

In Estonia all of the schools are connected to a network which is meant for students and teachers. Students can check their homework, grades, notes - pretty much everything.

And there is also access for parents who can check out what their young ones are doing. Although this is pretty innovative and we have it like for 5 years, many students hate it..

"E-School is a lifestyle and my Mom is living it"



Maybe this could add some extra value for people..

Ok I will try to address everything in one post

@macdonjo3
good question

@odhvut
I know of several people who are doing this right now and are going to do this that are on this forum. Hopefully they will post how they're doing soon.

@oldenglish
I suggest pricing in the OP but you some people say those prices are too low. As I've said to various people via PM and IM experiment around and see what price works. Think about it, there are so many schools that if you fail with the right price for 50 schools but then you've got it, there is so much to be made that you couldn't even fulfill the potential.

@dirtylittle
excellent suggestion. Actually the original thing that this was based on what not catering to schools but nonprofits/religious groups (among other differences)

@Sprouts
I see your point and you probably don't want to have it for open registration, because (1) students won't want to sign up (2) Child molesters might come on (3) more heavy moderation is needed etc. If you find they don't want to register there own users, you could have an invite only sign up or hire someone on DP to register students $1 per hundred (2000 kids - $20, which is a relatively small cost) I believe when my friend did a similar method he didn't enter the users and they did it for him but I'm not sure.

@ycfme
1) If you follow my registration advice that I have in OP or the response above ^ ^ you should be fine.
2) Teachers will be able to moderate there own personal forum. If they don't want to, they don't need to use it. The school will still want to have it as an available resource for students and teachers because it's cheap and useful. Remember, each account will be attached to a kid so if the kid does something bad online, then they will easily be traced and punished so you really shouldn't worry about that unless you have open registration.

@unzero
Most schools in America have a similar online resource already too, but that is different: This is a forum where teachers can post things and and kids can ask questions and has fully forum functionality. It's actually pretty unique. BTW there are whole websites dedicated to offering teachers websites to post notes and assignments on. That's there whole business. Sometimes teachers and schools even pay for those. Now imagine all that on one site thate is highly customize and user friendly. I don't know how it is in estonia but I know most american public schools could use this service.

What happens when one teacher quits, another is hired, other issues with the forum, technical questions, etc etc etc?

This is alot of work for say, 60$ a month. And if you try to get 10+ schools at the same time, good luck managing it.

Originally Posted by phatzilla

What happens when one teacher quits, another is hired, other issues with the forum, technical questions, etc etc etc?

This is alot of work for say, 60$ a month. And if you try to get 10+ schools at the same time, good luck managing it.

not really.

1) Who said anything about $60/m?
2) Teachers don't quit that often (teaching jobs are tight and they are union)
3) It doesn't even take that much effort to answer and deal with simple problems even from 10 schools at a time.
4) You could show them how to use the backend so they can deal with it themeselves. I could've sworn I said to do that in OP

You cant fucking teach people to react to ANY situation that arises. They would have to have the knowledge to adapt to a problem that you overlooked in your little PDF.

These ideas dont fucking work.

Shit will go wrong from time to time like it always does, and they'll look for you in order to help them fix it.

Might as well get a real damn job because this is what this little experiment will turn into.



All that said, i do wish you good luck and hope you make some money with it.

Nice method. Going to try it. It's definitely rewarding from am inner sense. Doing something beneficial for the community instead of pushing flogs with rebills.

As a side note. I smell a new Imran Naseem "offline profits" WSO on the horizon.

Originally Posted by phatzilla

You cant fucking teach people to react to ANY situation that arises. They would have to have the knowledge to adapt to a problem that you overlooked in your little PDF.

These ideas dont fucking work.

Shit will go wrong from time to time like it always does, and they'll look for you in order to help them fix it.

Might as well get a real damn job because this is what this little experiment will turn into.



All that said, i do wish you good luck and hope you make some money with it.

Ok you don't know what you're talking about so just stop.

Originally Posted by FruitPage

Nice method. Going to try it. It's definitely rewarding from am inner sense. Doing something beneficial for the community instead of pushing flogs with rebills.

As a side note. I smell a new Imran Naseem "offline profits" WSO on the horizon.

haha ya. thanks

easily the shittest idea on bhw

I don't see why some of you are so negative about it. If you can get the clientele, then you set things up to make things easier and capitalize financially on every end.

You offer them the hosting for which you charge on your own reseller account or have them sign up through an affiliate link and get the commission. I think the reseller route is better. You have full control that way.

Then obviously these are all closed forums by invite only or manual approval. That should take care of the predators and spammers.

And you charge them a monthly maintenance if they want you to maintain it. You can outsource the maintenance to take the load off and still come out even on the outsourcing fee at worst.

Meantime you have all these growing connections with the edu and pta communities. You can send them a monthly newsletter. Meantime, you find local businesses that might want to buy an ad spot on your newsletter.

Just one small tiny little thing you're going to need before you can set this up. You're going to have to be familiar with Public Schools Contract Law. Ideally, depending upon where you live, this will be a small inconsequential expense. However, you must keep in mind that you're dealing with bureaucracies and nothing is ever as simple as it should be.

It's amazing how something so inconsequential can become a huge controversial matter within a few weeks.

In either case, you're going to have to have a well-defined proposal to give them that clearly state exactly what you want to offer them. Then IF they accept you're going to have to have a clearly defined contract which their attorney will go over.

Keep in mind their attorney is being paid good money to say NO so they're looking for any excuse. This can take up to three months to get approved. Which means you should offer something like this in April or May so it's set up by the following school season.

This is a very good idea and should be simple to implement. However, never forget that you're dealing with bureaucracies and they are never simple. They must justify their existence by making things more complicated than they have to be.

Originally Posted by kusrayboy

easily the shittest idea on bhw

Oh rly? please explain why you say that.

Originally Posted by grafxextreme

Just one small tiny little thing you're going to need before you can set this up. You're going to have to be familiar with Public Schools Contract Law. Ideally, depending upon where you live, this will be a small inconsequential expense. However, you must keep in mind that you're dealing with bureaucracies and nothing is ever as simple as it should be.

It's amazing how something so inconsequential can become a huge controversial matter within a few weeks.

In either case, you're going to have to have a well-defined proposal to give them that clearly state exactly what you want to offer them. Then IF they accept you're going to have to have a clearly defined contract which their attorney will go over.

Keep in mind their attorney is being paid good money to say NO so they're looking for any excuse. This can take up to three months to get approved. Which means you should offer something like this in April or May so it's set up by the following school season.

This is a very good idea and should be simple to implement. However, never forget that you're dealing with bureaucracies and they are never simple. They must justify their existence by making things more complicated than they have to be.

That's why you go through PTAs instead of the actual school.

It'd be interesting if you could twist this into a way to end up controlling .edu doms
Of course, I think that you lose those if you do any advertising through them.

I wonder what would happen if someone made forums for the schools... for free... and put adsense and cpa offers on it.

Also, I have no idea of why you would want to use a free host. How much bandwidth is a school forum going to use?
I guess it will use quite a bit of server resources, eh?
Especially if it's not configured too well...

But wouldn't a free host get all excited and kick you out for that, or deny you the ability to run that kind of software, in the first place?

Originally Posted by Fred2507

It'd be interesting if you could twist this into a way to end up controlling .edu doms
Of course, I think that you lose those if you do any advertising through them.

I wonder what would happen if someone made forums for the schools... for free... and put adsense and cpa offers on it.

Also, I have no idea of why you would want to use a free host. How much bandwidth is a school forum going to use?
I guess it will use quite a bit of server resources, eh?
Especially if it's not configured too well...

But wouldn't a free host get all excited and kick you out for that, or deny you the ability to run that kind of software, in the first place?

Yeah I don't recommend a free host. Also keep in mind that edu domains are only for higher education institutes so public schools wouldnt have them. You could still put small links in the bottom of the page and get quality non-edu backlinks.

So yeah good suggestions.