You work online, start earning your first money, want to progress – sooner or later you realize that you need contacts in the online world in your particular niche otherwise you exist in some kind of vacuum.

As a sample I will talk about search marketing industry in this post. If we talk about Internet search marketing there are names that everybody knows: Jim Boykin, Aaron Wall, Rand Fishkin, Bill Slawski, etc. And there are names that are unfamiliar to the industry players. In fact, there are two great lists of the top industry experts that were recently posted on Rand Fishkin and Barry Schwartz’s blogs.

It would be great to see your name and blog on that list. Of course, there is an alternative way – the lists are not exhaustive and there are hundreds of other talented Internet search marketers. You can build ‘your own circle’. But before you know their names and they know yours it is a good idea to target best.

To begin with, read what reputation and image are to know what the target is.

The question is what it takes to get to that list?

- to start with, display your name and contact details at the website

- become an expert. You should be an expert in your industry and prove your status all the time (in your blog, online communities, conferences, projects you run, etc)

- generate unique ideas and some buzz. When you are a newbie you copy best experts in your niche. If you would like to join the expert list with time you need generate your own ideas. Good ones.

- time. It obviously takes time to become an expert and to let others know that you are one

- testimonials. Show customers happy with your services and products.

Probably, you will not get to the top list even if you follow the above guidelines. But you are likely to get contacts with other persons in your niche who are less known – by this you will achieve your target to find great people to communicate and build relations with in your niche.

Once you gain some reputation online (preferably, positive) you need to monitor and influence it. How to do that? The best way I know – make use of this Online reputation monitoring beginners guide where it is explained what and how to track. It is hard to gain a good online reputation, but it is easy to ruin it – a few forum posts and blog entries more than enough – take care of monitoring your hard earned reputation.

Summary: This post is about online reputation in search marketing – it is a sample. In general it applies to any industry online.

It is not easy to combine all aspects of your online work: you need to run your own website, regularly update it; you need to market and promote it; in addition you need find time to develop your online reputation. But it is a fact of life that these three components are a must if you would like to succeed online.

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In case you are unwilling to build your community website from zero (short of time, no experience, cash available to invest, etc) – the basics of the process and general guidelines how to start your forum I discussed in forum launch post – you have one more viable option: buy an established forum. Yes, a simple, efficient, but expensive way to become an owner of a web community.

The places to visit if you would like to check forums for sale are the same as I listed in the post on where to sell / buy websites So, you can combine your search of websites and forums and buy the property you like most.

You as a potential forum buyer should pay attention to most points mentioned in how to sell / buy websites but forums has some specifics that you should check additionally.

Here is a few extra points to go through while evaluating a forum (potential forum sellers should find these points also of some value – it will assist you to know what questions to expect from your prospects):

- is it a standalone forum or it comes with a blog or website or something else?

- check members list: date joined, last visit date (does membership grows smoothly, no unusual jumps in new members joining the community)

- posting frequency: check how many active posters the forum has (roughly in %), are there many lurkers?

- staff: who helps to run the forum? If there is staff how they are paid? Or are they volunteers? Who are moderators? Will they stay to go on with their work?

- check what mods the forum uses.

- does the forum come with some custom designed skin?

- read it for some time – can you get a feeling of community?

- check the forum reputation online: feedback, is it a well known community in its industry?

If the forum uses vBulletin software ask for VB admin Stats and Logs – you will see how many threads were started on a particular day, how many registered per day, how many registered members logged in per day. Does the seller include VB license into the sale?

You should be careful not to buy a forum that will go dead as soon as you buy it – the former owner could artificially boost much activity in recent days or weeks prior to sale – so, it is a good idea to browse the forum checking the dates of the posts.

If the forum owner is reluctant to reply to any of your questions or provide information you ask for – stop any negotiations.

Summary: Forums are great as they generate much content automatically. Yes, they are more difficult to monetize, but they take less time to run. Your business gets diversified – it is my belief that every forum owner runs websites, but not every website owner runs a forum.

Another great advantage of the online communities – you are less dependent on search engines. You will become more relaed when the next Google update comes and youwill not a frequent poster on www.webmasterworld.com (Google news section) where every second poster tries to find an answer to: why my pages go supplemental, why Google dropped so many pages of my dear website, why Google ignores my robots.txt file, why It does this and why It does that.

[tags]how to buy forums, how to sell forums, user generated content, forums, free, phpbb, vbulletin, link bait, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, archive.org, adsense, adwords, ppc, text-link-ads, links buying, links selling, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]

I have discussed how to sell / buy websites in this post

As promised I will cover the places where you should look for websites to sell or buy. The most popular places on the Internet:

www.sitepoint.com
www.digitalpoint.com
www.dnforum.com
www.geekvillage.com
www.iwebtool.com
www.v7n.com
www.namepros.com
www.webmaster-talk.com
www.webmasterforums.com
www.domainforums.com
www.searchengineforums.com
www.bizbuysell.com
www.Websitebroker.com
www.Time2sell.com
www.Businessbroker.net
www.Bizsale.com
www.Sedo.com

As a rule, a website for sale is placed on a few forums simultaneously and it is likely to be a sort of auction with:

- a starting price,
- min bid increments,
- end date and
- ‘buy it now’ price

If you are a buyer take your time to ask the questions discussed here, check the reputation of the seller in this forum and if possible make a general Internet research for this person.

If you sell a website be properly prepared to prove traffic, income, daily maintenance time required and other things. Do not expect that every website published for sale is actually sold. Take your time to see how others describe their websites on sale, what most common questions potential buyers ask.

If you would like to save some time and check most websites for sale from one place then Home of the online business marketplace is your destination:

BizMP is a radical new way to approach the ever changing internet virtual real estate market. With thousands of listings becoming available every day, will you be able to take full advantage of that data? With BizMP, you can. We provide you with free tools which make finding or selling your biz effortless.

The service features most listings from other marketplaces listed above. It extracts some significant information if it is available in the original posting: PR, Alexa, website age, etc. BizMP also runs its own forums where you can post your website for sale for free.

Summary: Most marketplaces are free and a standard registration is enough to place your announcement about a sale or a bid for buying. SitePoint charges a fee: $20.00 per listing plus some extra features for extra money available

But in my opinion it is the best place if you need good exposure of your sale – most serious buyers look for websites at that marketplace. So, it is worth your money.

[tags]where to buy websites, where to sell websites, domain names, archive.org, adsense, adwords, ppc, text-link-ads, links buying, links selling, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, news aggregator, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]