Writing Package
Junior Member
- May 26, 2017
- 168
- 95
You're absolutely right, Cnotey! I've noticed the same response when I tried to share what I learned. The response? Negativity.
I will disclose that I agree with the poster's general sentiment and that the information on the forum has grown increasingly lower in quality. There's nobody to blame for it, as many of the reasons that were brought up in this discussion:
- Size of the Forum
- Viral posts leading to patches
- Guides take a lot of time to write and people are busy
- etc.
Since many of the people here don't have Jr. VIP, I'll quote my idea here that's rather long but should provide the alternate 'solutions' that OP is missing.
WARNING: THIS THREAD WAS NOT WRITTEN FOR PEOPLE WITH THE ATTENTION SPAN OF A FLY. IT'S A LONG READ BUT OFFERS GOOD IDEAS FOR THE FORUM.
Many of you have just heard about the "Jr. Executive VIP "Hunger Games" Vol. 2: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/t...p-hunger-games-vol-2-you-still-hungry.991917/ .
It's a great idea that encourages an increased flow of quality content, ideas, and insights in the Jr. VIP forum.
It has made us excited, competitive, and turned the brightest minds here on BHW to vie against each other for the 'elusive' Jr. Executive badge.
We want access to the "capped off" libraries of knowledge that will turn our struggling businesses into profit machines.
The Dilemma
But the truth of the matter is: we're limiting our potential.
Here's why.
The major reason why we've become Jr. VIP in the first place is because of the value we've seen as a regular user. The normal "guide" posts were great, and most of the top contributors were part of the Jr. VIP club.
So, we eventually joined as time went on and we haven't regretted it since.
.....But there's still a major flaw: there's not enough quality content.
The strategies and techniques we write about - although good - work for a limited time before becoming obsolete as platforms and users evolve. I could point out a list of tens, if not hundreds, of threads that have slowly become obsolete within a short period of time.
But I don't need to do that or even prove my point. You all know this to be true and it explains why we keep coming back to this site: actionable knowledge.
Jeez, I mean we joined Black Hat World in the first place because we want to do two things:
But in order to make more money, you first need the proper framework in place to build a profitable business.
- Make Money on the Internet.
- Make even MORE money on the Internet.
You need to learn the basics well and apply it.
Many of us here think we know the basics, but many of our "basics" are just fallacies, predicated on our own assumptions from our limited level of understanding.
Nobody, after all, has all the answers for Internet Marketing because there's always going to be a novel way to: engage an audience, grow a social media account, increase conversions, increase SERPs, etc.
Who are we to blame? We're learning things that have never been done before. We're literally making history here on BHW.
That's why I love BHW, and why many of us keep coming back to it because of this. We're always looking for a new insight that will take our business to the next level.
That's why we need more quality content that's predicated on good research, case studies, and lots of personal experience, but we're hoarding the knowledge we currently have.
This prevents us, as a forum, from finding the next breakthrough in marketing, giving way for some "expert" to twinkle it upon the marketing community while charging exorbitantly high prices to access the knowledge.
It doesn't have to be this way.
The Solution
If we want to solve this problem of lack of fresh, valuable content, we're going to have to take action.
I have two proposed solutions at the moment that may encourage the flow of quality content without requiring the admins here to run a competition every year.
1. Forum Addition (Suggestion)
The quickest way to turn this forum from a traditional IM discussion hub to a knowledge hub is to build a "Knowledge" Subforum. You can call it anything you want, but the idea is to make this area the place where we aggregate all the valuable guides underneath one, organized hood.
You can then break the sections of this subforum into the major parts like SEO, SMM, Websites, etc. This helps cull all of the best information underneath one roof, makes it easy-to-access, and will definitely increase the number of registered users (potential Jr. VIP members).
We also need to build systems to incentivize the valuable contributors. Rather than making the "Hunger Games" competition (a great idea btw), make the "Hunger Games" competition year round and embed the reward within the framework of BHW's forum.
There are a lot of different ways to successfully do this, but the point is: incentivize your contributors.
How to do this? Look at Quora for inspiration and understand why the top writers keep coming back. This will help encourage the sharing of knowledge and lead to more breakthroughs, engagement, and higher-quality discussion on the forum.
This thread helps reinforce my point: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/best-guides-of-2017.958044/. This is a new user, sharing the same question as the majority of users (myself included).
Again, this is just a suggestion. Don't go mental on me. If you have a better idea, please share it with the community!
2. Learning Groups.
Mastermind groups exist, but their purpose is for people with existing, successful businesses and typically stay as a close-knitted group. I can say this entire forum is a huge learning group, but it doesn't feel this way at times. I, personally, find myself having much more fun, learn more, and become more productive when I have a group of friends learning with me.
No, not "study groups;" more like "teaching groups." We learn some things, we share what we learn with each other weekly or daily, and share our breakthroughs with the community here. This helps increase the level of retention, motivation, and slowly helps users build a valuable network of people.
This can be abused. Just set up rules similar to "Joint Ventures" and build a trust system. Make the standard rule that you can't speak about your private businesses in the learning groups. The sole purpose of the groups is to learn, share knowledge, and to improve; no commercial intent.
Who wants to join?
I would like to build the first learning group as a 'test' group. I want to start with 1-2 dedicated individuals that can dedicate an hour each day to learning IM. PM me if you're interested.
Include in the PM a quick introduction, how long you've been doing IM, why you want to join, and if you can consistently dedicate the required time. I prefer US-based applicants due to time differences, but we can make other time zones work if you're really dedicated.
If you consider yourself an "expert" in IM, please don't message me. We're going down to the very elementary roots of Internet Marketing and slowly rebuilding a fundamental understanding, so we can actually understand WHY things work.
For many of us, we do things just because they "work." We blame our lack of understanding on search engine's enigmatic algorithms, but I believe if you understand the basics you can understand 'why' things work.
Once you understand the 'why' - the 'how' becomes much easier to find and apply.
Conclusion
I've proposed my case because I care about this forum and I truly want it to continue to succeed. After all, we're making history. Just remember Albert Einstein's great words:
P.S. If you have any other great ideas, feel free to share it with the community! Who knows, maybe we'll find out something cool that will change this forum forever
Do you know how many people responded to my thread? 0.
Do you know how many PMs I received? 0.
Yet, I'm still confident that we as a community can find a solution for this problem. Now, before anyone starts pointing fingers and exclaims, "Why haven't YOU contributed?!"
Understand: that's the entire point of the post. If I could contribute more, I would -- but let's not pretend we consume more than we give.
I feel as though OP brought a good point to the table and one that the longest lurkers of the community has noticed. If anyone is interested in my original idea, feel free to PM me about it and feel free to post about it here.
