Teaming your Forum with an Online Shopping Cart

[MadMax1228]

I just wanted to open a thread here to answer questions and discuss my recent successes coupling vB with an online shopping cart. This is NOT an ad for my forums or cart, but is rather designed to assist other forum owners in achieving success. I will say up front.....this is not an easy win or a "get rich quick scheme". It is hard work, long hours, and many, many days with $0 sales.

To date, we have seen over $11,000 in revenues. Today was a typical day where we sold about $400 of products and services. Margins? They range from 2% on some drop ship items to 70% for lifetime memberships to our forums. Memberships come with the added benefit of having access to our private forum sections and access to a private section in the store for extra savings on merchandise.

Our forums are listed in my sig. and are focused on Ford Mustang and Ford GT500 Mustangs. Our store offers things like Stang Mafia swag, performance parts, car show boards, lifetime forum memberships, etc. etc. My store URL is http://store.blackvertmafia.com and I will leave it to admin if this link is OK here. I have no problem removing this link.

Our forums are also fully supported by the store, and we do not advertise at all. My members enjoy this very much.

[MadMax1228]

The forums came to be on a whim. We were all members of a popular GT500 Forum and were routinely having posts edited, being banned, etc. As customers, we were only trying to voice customer service issues and the owners would have none of that. Enough said there.

I was out of work and thought it would be nice to own a forum. So I did it. I bought 1, then 2, then 3 and Peggy was brought on board to design all 3.

We wanted to make money and ads were out of the question for me due to the small return and lack of appeal to members like me. Therefore, I decided to Incorporate Black Vert Mafia, Inc. and try my hand at doing what I had done for so many employers over the years......making me money instead of them.

Once all paperwork was filed, I approached Volusion and purchased their shopping cart software for $49.95/Mo. and a set up fee of $99.00. I immediately approached a close friend who sells Ford Racing Products and asked him to give me jobber rates to resell on my site. He accepted and we were off.

[MadMax1228]

The next step I took was to watch vendors of many forums to see how they handled customers. Those that treated customers well got a call from me looking for jobber rates. No one has turned me down that I have approached. Small business owners tend to stick together, as it is difficult to find trustworthy folks in the internet these days.

Since then we now drop ship via 4 suppliers with 0 issues, and have begun to develop a line of Stang Mafia shirts, Jackets, etc. with the help of other small businesses like Champs Online. Our forum is very popular and sees hundreds of posts daily as well as continuous folks online.

Recently a member that was 39 years old passed away. I donated store space, another member donated stickers in his memory, and we have raised over $1200 in donations through the site and store in less than 2 weeks.

This is just one option of many. I am not joking about the hours of work I have invested to get to this point. Some here like Peggy, Mike,and Dave assisted with my server issues, witnessed my frustrations, my all night posting looking for answers to tech issues, screwed up .htaccess files, etc. etc. and I appreciate it very much.

If one charts $'s per hour, I would be about 10 cents per hour. Hopefully, we will continue to grow and all the work will pay off. I am willing to help anyone here if this is a route you would like to take.

[ArnyVee]

Thanks for sharing this information! :D

I appreciate the effort and the hours put into your forums. I too was out of work and decided to start up my Walt Disney Boards forum. One, for fun...and two, to try and do something for me rather than someone else. I've now got two forums (one is in development and will 'debut' in about two weeks) and a social networking site. I've been able to sell advertising space and get myself the equivalent of about $3k / year with the couple of spots sold, but I'm looking to 'take it to the next level'. :D

I appreciate all of the questions you've answered for me via PM and I look forward to hopefully getting some continued support in the near future. Thanks Dana!

[Peggy]

First off, thank you for sharing all of this information! It is very interesting, and gives me, too, something to think about. Congrats on your success so far, and many prayers for continues success and growth.

Secondly, may I ask a question?

What is (or are) 'jobber rates'?

[MadMax1228]

Jobber rates are rates given to auto repair shops at a discount. I can then mark items up to make profit. It works well. One of my drop shippers has recently started giving me free shipping as well due to the sales we have broguht to the table.

[Mike54]

Peggy, to explain that a bit more -

A manufacturer will sell parts to a Warehouse Distributor, using what we refer to as W.D. pricing.

In years gone by, the W.D.'s would then sell parts to a store at Jobber prices.

In a regular automotive hard-parts store, there might be a Stocking Dealer price level for repair shops that stock the manufacturer's line of parts and a Non-Stocking Dealer price level for repair shops that do not stock the line.

Again, in years gone by, the Jobber would then sell parts to walk-in customers at Retail prices.

That was then and this is now, so the game has changed to a point of seeing who can be the biggest prostitute on the block. The shop where I work is a W.D. with most of the major, high-performance manufacturers, but there are a lot of mail-order warehouses that sell to anyone capable of dialing a phone at prices below the W.D. prices we pay. To remain competitive, we've been forced to cut our own margins to the quick.

Most manufacturers now have a W.D. price level, a trailer-load price level, a two trailer-load price level, etc. And the big guns that can afford to inventory that much product are taking advantage of it. I can't blame them for doing it, but I hope to see the manufacturer's that have these under-the-table deals get caught up in our failing economy. Dana will know of a very large, very old and very well-established intake manifold manufacturer that I know is struggling to keep his nose above the waterline. I will enjoy seeing him get his long-overdue lesson on karma.

We're now seeing manufacturers setting up M.A.P. (Minimum Advertised Price) levels, but it is a real legal can of worms and most of it is coming too little, too late. And the brick and mortar stores are dropping like flies, as a result. (Says he who is about to lose the job he's held for nearly 24 years.)

[MadMax1228]

One of my current 4 has MAP's and we adhere to them, sometimes I lose money. I also offer a "lowest price" guarantee for those who can find a lwer price, I meet or beat it. We are completely reliant on our customers to shop with us due to our commitment to customer service.


Last November I was a Logistics/Warehouse Manager for a major supplier of auto parts. Anyway, I was asked to stand on front of 140 people that had worked there for 1 to 40 years and explain how moving on line of parts to China was in the "best interest" of the Company and Team. BS! I said, and walked from a comfortable salary. I have now paid the price for my decision because we nearly lost everything personally.

I stand by me choice to support American Jobs to this day though.

All of my Suppliers are Made in America currently and I will not do business with anyone overseas as a result of my desire to keep jobs here. This again has cost me profit.... a lot of profit.

[MadMax1228]

Now, how does this tie into making money on a vB forum?

My customers are my members. They can ask questions, give feedback, and share tricks with each other. We are essentially a "one stop shop" for Q&A and new parts purchases. This level of accountability drives me and my admin team to make sure we are prompt and courteous to our customers, as payback for mistreating a custome can be swift on a forum with all 200 members watching our responses to issues.

[Dave A]

Dana - would you classify your forums as a support mechanism for your shop (ie the shop was the purpose from the outset), or the shop came as a useful add-on income generator from your forums?

[Peggy]

Thank you for the explanations, guys.

Dana, I, too, support buying made-in-America products and lost a good job due to my stance. I suffered greatly for a time, but am now doing better than I was then.

Dave, good question.

[MadMax1228]

Dana - would you classify your forums as a support mechanism for your shop (ie the shop was the purpose from the outset), or the shop came as a useful add-on income generator from your forums?

Good question. It all came together on it's own really. The initial idea was to have a safe haven Mustang GT500 Forum with free speech, as I came from a heavily monitored and overly moderated big board. To date, we have achieved that as we have only had to redirect a few bad words, but most have functioned well in our "Free Speech" environment.

However, after buying a vB license, paying for Incorporation, paying for our styles, I found we were running out of cash quickly and sites like Zazzle.com were not paying the bills with their small margins.

I am not a fan of ads on forum sites and wanted to try a new approach, so I started the process of building a store to support the sites within a few weeks and fashioned the theme around Peggy's nice job of www.blackvertmafia.com (http://www.blackvertmafia.com). To date the store has supported the sites and now we are looking to turn it into an income generator. My best guess is that it will be at least another year with our current growth rate before I can pull a salary, but if we do get to that point, it will be my dream job.....Get paid to talk about cars!

I currently have 2 other jobs in sales and my wife works as well, so this has been no free ride......80 hours per week on average over 7 days.

[Dave A]

Thanks, Dana.

I must say that after looking at it quite carefully, I've got a sense that having a shop that is genuinely useful to the members is probably the best way of monetizing a free forum site. However, (and again reading between the lines), the majority of forum sites that start out with the intention of being a commercially viable venture seem to fail.

It's one of those wierd conflicts that makes the forum business a little trickier than it seems to the casual glance.

[MadMax1228]

Agreed and that is the case with us as well. We have already lost 1 of our 3 forums due to lack of memberships and posts. One more is cued up for closing soon. For some odd reason, Stang Mafia has been the successful one of the three. We used the same formula on all three.

[Mike54]

Dana, I'm really impressed (Hell, I'm more than impressed, I'm jealous! ;)) what you've done with your shop. You've obviously hit a sweet spot with the right crowd.

One of my forums is really doing well with eBay ads of late, but the other two never generate a red cent. It's just a matter of the site demographics, I reckon.

[MadMax1228]

As of this morning, revenues are up to $11,690.

I will be glad to assist anyone here in this thread that wishes to try this option due to the support this forum has given me in the past. However, be prepared for a ton of work.....this is NOT for everyone and is NOT a get rich quick scheme.

[MadMax1228]

Revenue's continue to flow. It has be a little slow, as I made the mistake of introducing multiple sweatshirts, jackets, etc. in a short time frame. I have now learned not to overwhelm members with new products, but rather space NPI's out to one per week.

I have also been giving Lifetime Members additional discounts in a Private area of the store, which has helped somewhat.

On to the next chapter:

I have now purchased a new S Corp that will focus on building a 2011 Mustang with all the performance goodies one could want (estimated 750 RWHP at the time of purchase). The name of the Company is 2020 Motorworks Corporation. This has been annouced on the forum and we are using the feedback to direct what is added to the vehicle. I could nver do this without the vB Forum......

This one is a big stretch given the current issues with Ford, but I am confident the crisis will pass.

[MadMax1228]

We are coming to the end of 2008 and have decided to close another forum that is just not producing anything but spam attacks. However, Stang Mafia continues to grow and amaze me:

Members: 245
Threads: 1612
Posts: 64,093

Revenue from forum coupled with online store: $18,000 WOW!

We have yet to pay a salary to anyone including me, but we are in a good position moving into 2009. We have our bills covered well into April 2009, and that feels pretty good for a newbie.

[C138 Kaysone]

I signed up months ago but i was never approved for some reason, idk

[MadMax1228]

I am not sure of your question. approved for what?