Today we had our first forum poster who hit the 100 post mark! Thanks Scotty! The second biggest poster is pretty much halfway there, and it isn’t me. Come check out the forum, there’s lots going on.

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Great news! Starting today, we’ve decided to go ahead and open up the LearningCentre.com forums to the public for FREE. In the past we charged a one-time time of $100 for a lifetime membership, but for now we’ve decided to remove that sign-up fee and make it FREE! As both me (Steph) and Glenn Scott are both too busy to fully give the forums the time needed to properly market them, so we’ll let it build itself through word of mouth and participation (this blog is already experiencing exponential growth). Therefore I highly recommend you sign up now while it’s free.

We’re still going to be the two biggest posters, I have no doubt about it! We’re pretty prolific posters. It’s now almost become our main way of communicating ideas between the two of us, so you’ll probably find some great tips in there!

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Today I just came accross a post by Darren Rowse where I just found out that WordPress.com is now offering free “VIP” hosting which is not available to the public, only high profile bloggers with lots of traffic. The hosting package is pretty nice, with some features including version control, SSL, etc. What really struck me though was the price, $500 setup fee and a $250/month hosting charge. I find this extremely steep, and Darren is already suggesting that it’s being criticized by the blogging community. I don’t doubt it!

For example in comparison, the hosting package that I’m offering through my company is similar, except that you don’t get version control, and of course the bandwidth and server load is not balanced (which I have some serious doubts about how they really do this myself), but I do install WordPress, I setup Askimet for you, I setup your domain, I’ll install one theme and a plugin or two (within reasonable limits). I also don’t force you to put a “Powered by…” link on every page on your website, or force you to put statistic hooks so that I can know your metrics.

I also only charge a $20 setup fee, and $100/year for hosting (that includes 200mb of disk space and 10Gb of bandwidth). After that, the second domain is only $50/year. I charge a little more than the really cheap hosting services for the same bandwidth, but that’s because I provide a higher quality and more reliable service. I also refuse to overload the bandwidth on the server! That’s something I personally really hated when I first started out, so I refuse to do that. I’ll charge a little more instead since it’s worth it, trust me I know from experience! Downtime, or an unresponsive server, is money lost. By the way, if you’re interested in getting a hosting package from me, you can contact me directly at: steph@followsteph.com

Anyways, it really struck me as an expensive hosting solution. For that price, I’d be ahead just getting my own managed dedicated server. It would cheaper and I’d have more power and options!

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Since we started to develop LearningCentre.com and promote it (late August) using some of the techniques we’ve shown in the seminar (we haven’t had the time yet to use all of them, nor are they all effective for this type of website), we’re already experiencing some amazing traffic growth! I’ve posted below the website’s traffic since the beginning of the year and extrapolated based on our current growth we’ll be at the end of this month to show the true growth. Seing as we already have 2314 unique visitors for this month, there no doubt we’ll hit the estimated 3k by the end of the month. As you can see, there is a significant growth in traffic!

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Having created and managed several websites (LandlordMax.com, FollowSteph.com, etc.) over the last few years, I’m getting pretty good at predicting a website’s chances of success, as well as which areas will generate the most traffic. I have to admit that this website (LearningCentre.com) completely through me for a loop. I expected the main page to get the most traffic, followed by the blog (free valuable content), then followed by the forums, as this last section costs $100 for a lifetime membership. Was I ever wrong!!!

The forum, based on the number of unique visitors, never mind hits, gets a little more than twice as much traffic as the blog and the main page! Yes, the paid content gets almost double the amount of unique visitors! That really surprised me, in a good way.

So all this to say that you no matter how much experience and expertise you have in creating and managing websites, you can never really predict what will happen until it goes live. The more experience you have, the more likely you are to be an accurate predictor, but you can never know for sure without trying it out first (test test test).

Another interesting tidbit of news about LearningCentre.com, we’ve already beaten the traffic (in terms of unique visitors) from last month and it’s not even half way through the month! Not bad for a brand new site.

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From now on you can purchase a lifetime membership to our members-only forums for $100. Yes, that’s only $100 for permanent access to the forums! At this time you can contact us at sales@learningcentre.com for more details, but hopefully by the end of the week we’ll have it completely automated on the website so that you can purchase it directly online.

Also, anyone who takes one of our seminars, you automatically get access to the forums without having to pay the $100 fee. That’s a great savings considering everything else you get with the seminar.

And if you’re new here, take a look at the forums. There’s already a lot of activity for only being around a week or so! You can read all the thread titles, you just can’t read their content without being a member.

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Just to let you all know, the deadline for registering for this amazing seminar is only a few short days away (September 8, 2006). Don’t wait until the last minute in case its sold out. Register now!

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Me and Scotty have been discussing quite a bit and we’ve come up with several offerings we believe you’ll like, there’s something for everyone!

Adsense, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Website Promotions

This is a repeat of the initial course offered here in Ottawa on September 23-24, 2006. The final registration date is September 8, 2006 so don’t delay as seats are filling up fast
for this unique opportunity!

This course will be offered at $495, which is incredible well priced considering the amount of content you get! Just look at the video testimonials we’ve received from the last seminar.

Monthly Evening Event

Once a month me and Scotty will host a Monthly Evening Event where either us, or a guest speaker, will comment on industry specific news that you can benefit from.

As an added benefit for those of you who join this group, we’re going to offer free access to the members-only forum for your duration.

This package will be offered at $25/month or for $250/year if you pre-pay (giving you 2 free months + free access to the members-only forum).

LearningCentre.com Blog

This will be free to the general public. We’ll try to post as much valuable information as we can, but precendence will of course be given to the Monthly Evening Event group.

Members-Only Forum

This will be an online forum where me and Scotty will be very active, where you’ll get a lot of latest news and there will be a lot of discussions and idea sharing. We’re very excited about this concept!

If you join the Monthly Evening Event then this will be free while you’re a part of that group. Otherwise you can purchase a membership at a very affordable cost of $10/month or $100/year if you pre-pay.

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