Someone recently requested I write this and, when it was finished, post it in the Lounge. So, here it is.

I’ve worked in a couple of interesting industries. Comic books, games, things where business doesn't work the same way that you would expect. And that has gifted me with a bit of perspective in how strange businesses work. You can't run a game shop without building a community. You can't run a comic shop without content. You can't be a baker without being in shape and you can't be a dishwasher without being a psychologist.

You can't run a website the way this one is run and expect to make money. I'm not looking at this from the perspective of what the community wants or needs; that's death to a business. I'm looking at what needs to be done for the business side of this website to thrive. I'm sure the kids running the place, Gambler et al, believe the place is doing just fine, but I've been around a long time and I remember what made this place great, what helped retain readers and push the view counts through the roof. I remember coming back to read Romeo or Methuselah's posts, to see what whacky antics Giacomo had been up to. These guys weren't legends yet, mind. They were just guys, like me, struggling to get some touch in a world that had stifled hetero male sexuality to the point of vilification. They were the writers, the guys that could make the words march in line, the idea guys and the field testers. You could throw anything at these guys and they'd give it a shot, let you know how it worked for them and what they needed to tweak to make it work right. The forum was thriving with ideas, and the discussions ran hot and quick. Others in the old guard remember these days. Xfman, Hobbit, Jsmooth, Zip. I'm sure they also remember what destroyed it, and the slow downward spiral this place has seen ever since.

See, what was awesome about those times, the things that were elevating PUAF above other forums, was a combination of community, content, and education that was unparalleled in the industry. With those things in place, buying a forum like this one makes a lot of sense. Without those things, you have a stagnating pile of ass run by a saggy bunch of ex-pick-up artist keyboard jockeys. The guys that rocked, the best and brightest of this community, have gone on to other things. What is left are the dregs, hoping to glean any sort of knowledge from the cesspool this forum has become.

So what do you do? How do you turn this into something that is going to make a bunch of money? I have a five step plan to fix this. Regardless of what happens, this is yours to keep. It is an open letter and an open business plan for getting your shit organized and turning this place into a money making machine.

Steps:

• Step Zero: Get organized
• One: Structure the community
• Two: Educate
• Three: Branding
• Four: Merchandising
• Five: Advertising

Step Zero: Get Organized

You will not be able to do this until a few very key structures are in place. You need a manager. You cannot do this without someone dedicated to making it work. That manager needs a staff of at least two people: a graphic designer and a community outreach marketing professional. It doesn't matter if these duties are shared by other people in the already established company, or if you hire new people for the job, but they will need enough time to be able to attend their duties. Pay these people well.

You will need a schedule and you will need to keep that schedule. On that schedule should be a number of important items such as recruitment, design, testing, implementation, and maintenance. This is a lot like the stages of designing a game or a product for sale, because that is precisely what you are developing.

You will need an office, and it cannot be poorly designed. This industry thrives on its image, and you need to maintain that image in the physical space of your endeavor as much as the online presence. This office will house your staff, and become the nerve center for your workshops and seminars. It's where your secretary will work and where your personal assistant will do his or her thing. It is also where you will work, and where the majority of your training will occur.

Step One: Structure the Community

One of the reasons you had more visitors under Brad than under the new administration was that the forum was a breeding ground for up and coming pick up artists. None of us were the best in the world, but we were a capable bunch and we had some pretty deep conversations about pick up on a regular basis. That content was important because it kept people coming back, just to read. That traffic equalled more people posting. More posts meant more to read which increased conversion rates and made the site even more popular. Since losing those up and comers, they have not been replaced by anyone particularly capable. This has had the predictable effect of lowering quality posts, dropping the overall conversion rate and destroying the overall post per day count. This is not good for your business at all.

What you need to do is change the conversation. You need to get some solid writers, some up and coming pick up artists, some field testers and innovators, and you need to get them posting on a regular basis. You can't do that without incentive, though, and that incentive needs to allow you some measure of control over the content output. Simply put, you need to hire some decent writers and pick up artists to revitalize this place.

But hold on. Now I've talked about hiring a manager, a graphic artist, a community manager, and now a team of writers. How in the nine hells is this supposed to make you any money at all if you're shelling out huge dollars for exactly nothing in return? I understand the confusion, but trust me when I say that we'll be getting to that.

Having a team of writers and post-makers under your employ means that you control the message. You are the ones that decide the direction that this newest generation of pick up artists moves. It means that you are able to structure the conversation in such a way that it emphasizes the aspects of pick up that your company wants emphasized, rather than organically growing in whatever direction the customers want. Let me make this very clear: you do not market by selling people things they already want; you market by making people want a thing that solves a problem they do not realize they have yet. You could sell this generation of pick up artists the protein supplements and steroids they're after, but in two years, you would be playing catch up all over again as the tide shifts to something else. Instead, by structuring the conversation to play to your strengths as a company, you build a market of people more than willing to buy what you are selling.

And having a team of writers that people trust to have their best interests at heart means that you can build advertising and cross-marketing opportunities that might not otherwise exist. More on that in step five.

Step Two: Educate

One of the reasons that post counts flew through the roof three years ago was that the people posting were educating their peers. People came back to ask questions, read answers, search for the piece they were missing with this one girl, or figure out what they did wrong with that hot four set last Saturday. Whatever team you put together is going to need to be decent in the field. They will need to know their stuff, so that they can teach that stuff to others. Moreover, they will need to be teaching the stuff you want people to know. They should likely be teaching more than you would like them to, stuff from your workshops, stuff from your seminars. This provides a level of trust and understanding (again, trust is a really important factor here), and it gives a sense of security knowing that the forum's best and brightest know what they're talking about.

This also means that you will be able to create discussion around your products, the seminars and workshops that make up the majority of your current income (I am, of course, making gross assumptions about your business model). By educating your writers to educate your visitors to educate and convert new visitors and customers, you build a network of information that suits your needs much more aptly than the forum currently can.

Even more pointedly, training your writers in both education and writing serves to pad out your ranks of workshop and seminar educators, effectively growing your reach and profit potential. While it is generally true that new, untested workshop leaders are less desirable than the Big Names, having a few of these men and women on staff already makes it easier to build name and brand recognition for these young up and comers. Having people recognize and appreciate their writing beforehand will also help build some name recognition prior to shoving them in front of a room full of empty heads.

This approach to educating both your writing staff and your visitors will have the periphery effect of improving the forum's content as a whole. You will have better discussion, more lively debate, drama, rivalry and educative material on which the next generation of pick up artists can grow. Each new generation brings with it something new and intriguing that will provide material for future writing, continuing the process indefinitely.

Step Three: Branding

Pick Up Artist Training has no clear brand that I can identify. I recognize certain faces and I understand certain banner ads to be keyed to this company, but there is nothing about PUAF or PUAT that is clearly, effectively branded. As a marketer, I see this as a major stumbling block in establishing PUAF as a money-generating engine. See, the brand is the thing: to make an effective entry as an advertising and secondary marketing force, people need to immediately recognize your work. Do you know what Mystery's medallion means? How about female silhouettes on a black leatherette background? Of course you do. Those things are great examples of branding at work, and at present, the closest PUAF has to it is Adam Lyons' face. Don't get me wrong, the fellow is pretty enough, but the man cannot effectively carry the whole of the brand, here. Gambler has made efforts to pick that up some, but he hardly has the instant recognizability Lyons has (outside of the UK, anyhow).

There are a few things that need to happen for the branding to be effective: you need a logo more recognizable than a female silhouette beside the word MPUAforum; you need to make a concerted effort to connect all of the various bits of your empire together. Bristol Lair looks nothing like PUAF. PUAF looks nothing like PUAT. This is fucking brutal, guys. Fifteen minutes into a marketing seminar, and you will have it well beaten into you that making a solid mental connection between your brands is the most important thing you can do to solidify brand identity. You need a cohesive visual identity. I cannot stress this enough. If you want to develop trust, you need a consistent voice. If you want to develop brand recognition, you need consistent visuals.

As important, you need a human face that both represents and is responsible for the product you are selling. You need someone who will speak directly to the public about the product and why it is the way it is. This person is your community manager. This person is the scapegoat when things go well and the person who gets all the credit when things go well. Your community manager is the most important human being in your marketing machine, responsible for being the even voice of the company, and for being a recognizable face to the people who buy your products.

You want people to be able to recognize you at a glance, and you want people to recognize each of your various sections as being visually cohesive. If PUAF and Bristol Lair and PUAT all have the same logos attached to them, all have the same layouts, all have the same pictures and iconography, then people will immediately recognize those things together. Moreover, if those things are interlinked (if, for instance, each of these properties were made into a single, overarching service), you could create what would likely become the most useful pick-up artist online service yet put together. Having Bristol Lair’s educational resources next to the pick-up artist forum’s community resources next to pick-up artist training’s workshop resources would be of great benefit to everyone, especially you, the people trying to monetize these resources.

Making this happen, bringing cohesion to your online resources should be your biggest priority so far as your marketing is concerned. So much of your marketing strategy relies on internet presence, making that presence work for you is a big deal. Consistency is key, gents.

Step Four: Merchandising

I want you to take a quick look at your market. To whom are you trying to peddle your wares? My guess would be that your biggest demographic in the nerds. Nerds like to buy things. I know this because I work in a nerd store.

See, you can sell comics until the cows come home, but they’re not what keep a comic shop alive. What makes the most money is always the merch. It’s the t-shirts. It’s the hoodies and the belt buckles and the rings. It’s the patches and the stickers you put on your car and the gelaskins you put on the back of your trendy Macbooks. It’s the stuff that isn’t actually a comic-book, but is clearly related to comic books, that makes a shop their biggest chunk of change.

The same is true in gaming. A ridiculous amount of the money that is brought in with tabletop games or video games comes from the action figures and miniatures and dice and apparel that are related to those products. If I know the audience you’re selling things to, the same will be true of the pick-up arts.

How many guys have a kiss tattooed to their neck, now? How many guys have gotten a heart tattooed to their wrist after reading the game? How many fuzzy green vests have been sold or knockoffs of Mystery’s medallions? There is a lot of money to be made in selling people stuff that includes them in a community.

I wear a shirt that has all of Magic: The Gathering’s mana symbols on it. Under them is the phrase “What color do you want me to beat you with today?” This is a code, it’s flying a flag that says “I am a nerd, and I play this game. If you also play this game, that is a safe topic to talk to me about.” When in places with a high nerd concentration, I get a lot of comments about it. When I’m in a place with a low nerd population, it has made it a lot easier to figure out who the nerds are.

And yes, there is an argument to be made that suggests some people will not want to wear their affiliation with the pick-up community on their chest. That is very true. There are definitely some people for whom this merchandise will not be suited. There are also people for whom a Fruit Fucker shirt would not be suited, and Penny Arcade is still making a killing on those shirts.

When you have a clear brand identity, you can turn that identity into a product, a physical product that you can then sell to people. That’s not a small thing, guys. That’s where you make a decent product for cheap, sell it for a 150% mark-up or more, wholesale them at a 75% markup to interested clothing distributors, and you make a fucking killing. You could build an entirely new brand of clothing. “Peacock’s,” could sell everything from branded feather boas to letterman’s jackets with a large PU on the left breast, surrounded with “assiduus usus uni rei deditus et ingenium et artem saepe vincit” (Constant practice devoted to one subject often outdoes both intelligence and skill). There is the possibility of an entire line of men’s clothing, designed for pick-up artists, by pick-up artists.

And this doesn’t include the incredible range of other merchandising possibilities. Shot glasses, grooming products (combs, ‘fro picks, men’s eyeliner, a brand of soap and/or deodorant, shampoo, hair products, etc), phone directory books, notebooks, field journals, other stationary, mugs, posters, DVDs, toys, games, learning aids… The possibilities are damned near endless, and once you have a solid brand identity, there’s no reason you can’t make anything and everything with your logo and brand on it.

This is the first step in which you will actually be making money for the money you’ve spent. After the work and effort of organizing your affairs, building your brand, engaging and energizing the community, and building your brand, you will have a series of products that people are lining up to buy. Seriously, have you ever tried to buy a feather boa when it isn’t Halloween? Not an easy thing to come by, and if it just happens to have a logo on it that I recognize, all the better.

Step Five: Advertising

This is the step that will get you the most bank for your community. Right now, www.pick-up-artist-forum.com has a number of possible advertising points per page. Each one of the main ones gets hundreds, maybe thousands of hits per day. With the increase brought about through more directed and quality content and branding, you can count on the hits per page jumping significantly.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you are advertising your own workshops on things you own. I understand that you need to fill seats, but there are more effective methods for marketing those things. You have, literally, unlimited space with which to market the stuff you own. Instead, you can turn the space that you’re currently misusing to sell products that might be of interest to the community you serve.

This is not me telling you to turn on Google Ads. This is me telling you to get some trust behind you, get people listening to what your company has to say, and believing it (because it’s true and because it helps people), and then use that trust to tell people about products you like. This is me telling you to make money for doing that. This is me telling you to put together an advertising package that ensures a percentage of exposures per month, and then fucking make that happen. As I am writing this, there are 145 people looking at the forum. Only about fifteen of them are registered users. That means that there are 130 new advertising views happening. Right. Now.

A solid advertising package, one that is well-priced and has an attractive return on investment, has advertisers coming to you, looking to sell their products to the people in your community. It won’t start that way, for certain. It will require cold-calling and B2B sales, it will require doing some footwork and building a reputation for selling solid ad space. But once that is established, you just sit back and let the site make its own money.

See, this way, the site becomes its own self-sustaining entity. You don’t need to make money off of the workshops to help pay for the website, which frees you up to lower prices (or simply reduce overhead [well, technically you’ve increased overhead, but that evens out with a website that no longer costs you dollars once the whole of the plan has wrapped up, and you have a bunch of shiny new avenues for expanding profit]).

So What’s the Goal?

So, why did I write an eight-page marketing plan for a company I don’t work for? Honestly? I think that this forum making more money is in the best interests of the community. I believe that if the forum is producing quality content – which is a thing that is good for the community – the website will be able to make money independent of workshops, seminars, or the whims of the folk who own the place.

The goal is to make the website empire of Pick-Up Artist Training independently successful. I want to see PUAF, PUAT and Bristol Lair making money for our Beneficent Overlords because that means they can afford to pay the people who make it amazing. Giving the people who make the place amazing a reason to keep making it amazing means it will continue to be a solid education center, a great community, and filled with the best damned pick-up artists we can make.

I’m not looking for a job. I have a job, and I love it. You need guys like Hobbit on your payroll, running shit. You need chicks like Zip writing for you because she knows her shit and she's an entertaining writer. You need to give JSmooth a stipend and pay Kasabi for every word he uploads.

You need to hold auditions, get people writing field reports, trying out wacky shit people have thought of that might work and recording the process. The best of those people? Hire them. They are the people who are going to make your company the best it can be, and make your forum retain even more traffic than it already does.

You need to get your shit organized. You want to be taken seriously as a company, you need to act like a serious company. Branding. Merchandising. Advertising. These are things you need to be taking more seriously if you’re serious about this thing making the sorts of money it should be.

_________________
Repent now and save 50% on your next divine judgment.
-Monkey's Little Brother, Spud

Hi Monkey,
This post was written fantastically and is full of amazing things. However, for the point of keeping things in perspective for you there are a few assumptions I feel you made that need correcting.

I think the first and most important point for you to realise is the management "staff" the forum users see are us, the mods. We are NOT paid for what we do, we DONT have control over what is on the site or anything like that. We are constrained to being moderators, we can edit; delete; move posts and users. We do notice the problems you are mentioning, but without a budget (at least for others, not to mention ourselves) there is very little we can do. Therefore, I will be passing this on to gambler for him to look at.

The next thing you need to realise is the goal of the PUAF. You keep saying how it needs to make money, but from my experience this site is run more like a community project - PUAT put their name on it and leave it to run for the good of the people. Obviously it generates income via people going on PUAT sites,courses and buying their books/dvd's but that is the limit of its influence from my perspective.

One point you make I completely disagree with, This is something all the mods feel very strongly about. We do everything we can to NOT control the message the forum gives out (as long as its legal etc). This is because we DONT want this place to become the "PUAT is so fucking awesome" forum. I don't think the majority of users want that either.

As for getting good posts up, I don't know if you remember an incentive I ran a while ago called post of the month? Basically, the users voted for the best post and the author got a $50 Amazon voucher or any physical PUAT product. This was somewhat effective in getting article type posts on the forum, but due to limitations of the forum software (my next point) it was incredibly time consuming to run and didn't always highlight the actual best posts on the forum.

So my last point, again a very big issue for the mods, is the actual forum tech. It isn't massively noticeable from the users side, but the forum tech is falling apart and makes being a mod insanely difficult. Gambler IS in the process of getting a new website up and running, working on new software and it will incorporate lots of cool and fun new features that users have wanted. As you may be aware, getting this all set up and running is a rather large task - the database of this forum is HUGE, posts and users. All of which have been made on very dated software which makes effectively transferring the information across and keeping it working rather difficult (= expensive).



However, I am happy to discuss these issues with you - I cannot explain how great it is to see members of the forum putting such active effort into trying to find ways to make this site even more awesome. I am one of the people who remembers the old days when Zip, Rye Lee etc were all around loads, the forum was an amazing place and I learnt a hell of a lot. Anything we can do to improve the forum, its content and the community will be taken on bored and passed on to the powers that be!

/madals

Exactly. If this forum basically becomes PUAT's personal forum (much like TheAttractionForums is Love System's forum, and RSD Nation is rsd's forum) I, along with many other I presume, will probably be getting off of here.

@Monkey, you also mention how you feel there should be a team of writers on here making post often. Truth is, I don't personally feel the forum has a content problem. Many experienced guys, as well and up and coming guys post theory/how-to/pickup type post often enough. How much theory does one really need? Between the million pua books and the forum itself I could argue that a team of writers rehashing even theory on the forum would simply cause people to sit indoors and mentally masturbate even more.

Everything one needs to know about getting good with women can already be found on the forum.

That said, Monkey, you do have some great ideas for anyone who has a forum that wants to make as much money of it as possible but I hope the forum doesn't change much from how it is currently.

I enjoy the forum how it is. I can participate in discussions, make post, its easy to navigate, has a chat room, and most of the mods are pretty cool. The best thing... its all free.

"If it aint broke, don't fix it."

_________________
Never get broken up with again: the-addiction-formula-never-get-broken- ... 88794.html

@Madals:

Assumption One: When I say "management," I mean Gambler et al. I know the mods have no control, and don't expect them to impliment changes or provide a budget for change. Y'all are minions, and I get that.

Assumption Two: I would actually be willing to suggest that the goal of PUAF has been to avoid making money for a long time. And that's not a bad thing; if you're rocking a labour of love, something you never expect to see a return on, then more power to you. I'm just of the opinion that a forum that makes money, a forum able to incentivize and grow it's market outreach, results in a larger, happier community.

Architecture: We're running what, PhPBB2ish? Yes, the architecture is old and busted. The new versions of PhPBB aren't as clean as I'd like, which compounds the problem.

Mods as Employees: The mods should be getting paid for what they do. Once upon a time, that was the plan. Brad had a number of good folk on his payroll, because he understood what it is I'm trying to put forth here: when the forum is making enough money to be a self-sustained enterprise, when it is making enough money to incentivize good posts and solid writing, everyone wins.

RE: The Message: And you already control the message, man. Even just saying that you're taking a hands off approach to the message is controlling the message. By choosing to let people post whatever they want, by not posting on topics that would direct the flow of conversation, the mods are exercising the control that they have over the direction of the forum. It encourages people to post in a sort of shot-gun pattern, spreading to whatever catches the collective fancy at the moment. That is a fine way to go about it, but it's not a method that is going to keep quality pick-up artists and writers coming back.

I've sent you a PM with my contact information. Have the big guys give me a call. If you don't get it (stupid outbox), send me an e-mail at khansen dot mbs at hotmail dot com, and I'll get you my digits.

@Warped Mindless:

RE: The Message: Controlling the message does not necessarilly mean PUAF becomes PUAT's company forum. PUAF is _already_ PUAT's company forum. When they purchased it, that was one of the things they bought: the right to do whatever the fuck they want with the thing.

Quality: The quality of the forum has degraded severely over the last two years. This is not my opinion, this is a matter of post frequency, hit rates, and conversion. Anyone with an eye for those things can see it. The content being created is simply not as good as the content was two years ago. Why? Because the best of us are not incentivized to stay. We move on to other companies. We start teaching workshops. We leave because there is no good reason to stay.

Experienced PUAs: Really, for a guy who has no trouble obtaining new and exciting partners, for a guy who has no trouble getting into MLTR situations and navigating them, for a guy who has _won_ the game, what the hell does this place offer? The PMZ? Ridiculous. There is no reason to keep coming back to this forum once you have attained a level of competence in pick-up. So the competent people leave, and they're replaced by incompetent people, and the cycle of ignorance and the proliferation of bad information.

Keeping those people, keeping the most competent pick-up artists and writers this forum has produced, is integral to keeping the community educational, entertaining and healthy. Without them, this place becomes... Well, what this place has become. There is a dearth of experiened pick-up artists posting. Most of the shit that gets tossed around the forum is half-tested, mangled asshattery. By giving the best and brightest of the forum some money to stick around and keep writing, the aim is to adjust that.

Broke-ass: And it _is_ broke. It is making virtually no money at all. It's incapable of sustaining itself away from the workshops and seminars and DVD sales PUAT makes. And PUAT has proven itself rather incapable of building a basic marketing strategy.

@Everyone Concerned:

Don't Panic: If the changes are implemented properly, you will barely notice. Most of the people newly employed as writers here would be people who have been posting here for a long time already. Hot new talent would emerge, and if their job is done right, no one will know that they are under the employ of the PUAT. Banner ads would slowly begin to replace the ones we already have in place, some of the set dressing would change (the new logo and graphic design), and the quality of the posts and discussion would slowly improve. I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel, here. I'm looking to take something that is already good and make it _fucking great_. And, while we're at it, if we could make it capable of supporting itself and growing as a business, that would be win.

_________________
Repent now and save 50% on your next divine judgment.
-Monkey's Little Brother, Spud

LOL at criticizing Richards/Gambler's marketing ability. Though his skill with women is suspect, his skill with marketing is not. He is a current industry leader (top 5 anyways) due to is marketing stragety.

Richard, being a marketer himself, along with having a team of marketers at his disposal is more than capable of maximizing the earning potential of this forum without consulting some random dudes advice from the internet.

Also you mention there is no incentive for the experienced guys to stick around. lol. I believe many of us stick around simply because we like to help people. Pretty good reason if you ask me.

All in all, this place is fine. More than enough information on here alone to help a guy succeed with women.

_________________
Never get broken up with again: the-addiction-formula-never-get-broken- ... 88794.html

Regarding this post has a lot of valuable points and such can generate a lot of wealth folowing your strategy, it is unthinkable that we will.

This forum is owned by Gambler, Yes, that's true. But that's as far as it goes. The ones that maintain the forum are the moderators and as such, they do it for free. Their own spare time, they sacrifice for the forum.. to TRY and keep it organised and TRY to run it as it should be run.

Do realise, that when you want quality posts, you need quality members. And fair to be said, those who have the skill or the time to write things are either the moderators or have a personal life to.

Eventually, you grow up..
Eventually, you grow past this forum..
Eventually, you take all that you have learned and go on with your life - incorperating all the lessons & the techniques as your own.

Selfish as it is, nobody actually stands still to help others with their growth.

≠ LD

_________________
Founder & coach at Dance 2 Seduce -- contact me for more information.

FREE coaching advice on Fridays from 22PM to 23PM at the MPUA chatroom.

Man, I totally understand and sympathize with the mod's place here. I've been there in other communities, and it's not an easy position to hold. You guys sacrifice your time and your energy and your sanity to keep this place running with tools that amount to a bag of marbles and a couple sticks of gum. The forum is old and busted, the spammers and grifters get better all the time, and you're doing an admirable job of keeping this place a nice spot to hang out.

But that isn't really what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is making this one of the most powerful resources in a RAFC's arsenal. I'm talking about filling this place with information that isn't horrible and resources that actually work in the favor of the people who come here, while creating revenue. Seems to me, this would be a worthwhile effort for someone who wants to devote more of their time to picking up pretty girls than working.

Obviously, I am in the minority here, though. I'll be gracefully bowing out of the discussion, now.

_________________
Repent now and save 50% on your next divine judgment.
-Monkey's Little Brother, Spud