Weekly Staff Interview Series #8 -- Collin
Hello, and welcome to the latest edition of our Weekly Staff Member Interview Series!
This week, we have decided to interview Collin. This member is a staff member of Forum Promotion, and is an Ambassador in the Community Team.
Now on to the interview!
Hi Collin, the question I like to start off with, just like everyone else, is: what can you tell us about yourself? Hello! My name is Collin, and I am on the Community Team here at Forum Promotion. I live in the beautiful town of Anderson, Indiana, and I absolutely love being a webmaster. I own a web hosting company, work in a warehouse full time, manage websites, and happily dedicate my time to FP. I used to be a lifeguard, and I may choose to do that again next summer. I recently graduated high school, and I'm working around various positions to see what interests me best. I want to make sure that I make the right choice with what I want to major in, without taking too much time to think about it. My position at a warehouse is temporary, and was only supposed to last a week, but, it has been about a month now, and now they want to train me to drive a forklift. One of the forklift drivers was recently moved from that position, so it looks to me as if they want to directly hire me on. Anyways, I'm a busy guy, and I'm friendly as well. I love to help people out, especially webmasters. I'm not a heavy coder or anything, but I know how to help out people who have issues that I used to have in the past. If you ever need any help with anything, feel free to let me know! How has your time here at FP been? What do you like about the community? My time here at FP has been great! I love the community, and I love to see the vast variety of sites that are promoted here at FP. This forum is a great forum to take advantage of, and it's a friendly community as well! I was recently on the Package Team for a little while, but then I found out that wasn't the right position for me. But, I must say, if you ever see a topic come up for teams who are hiring, apply, even if you don't think you'll be chosen. I was suprised when I was hired on to the Package Team. I woke up the next morning, and my username was orange! If you think that you won't be added, just because of warnings, or a lower post count, apply anyways! Getting your applications in doesn't hurt, and sometimes, they'll be brought up later! Anyways, I love how much FP has grown, and I am excited to be a part of such a thriving community. I've worked on a few other forums, but, Forum Promotion is the most fun when you interact with such a great community, and a great team of staff members. What can you tell us about Volact? Volact is a web hosting company that I started about 7 months ago, and it's rapidly growing. I have experienced trial and error, just like everyone else has, but we're both improving and growing as a web host. At first, Volact only offered Shared Hosting, and that was all. Now, we're offering Reseller plans as well. We even made a deal with Blesta as well, so our licenses are cheap, without the high license reseller costs, making it both beneficial to us and our clients. We're focused on providing a 99.99% uptime guarantee, and a 100% customer satisfaction guarantee! Customer satisfaction is our number 1 priority! You can find Volact web hosting at the following URL: https://volact.com/ Do you have any advice for those of us interested in starting web hosts? I have two main pieces of advice: take your time, and don't pay for advertising. I know some people would disagree, but that's alright. I've never paid for any clients, and I'd say I'm successful as of now. There are two main quotes that inspire me the most. One is "Money = Hard Work + Time". You'll need to be patient when starting a web hosting company, and don't expect to get a lot of clients right away. Go around locally, design websites for small businesses, and then link your site in the footer, where you can also showcase your latest works. One website that I've received a lot of conversions is WebHostingTalk. You can post your topic once a week, and I'll usually get more than a few signups right away. Remain patient, and remain calm. Don't make sudden changes, and focus on what your clients want, versus what would be beneficial to both of you. Don't take the first month transferring from server to server, but instead, list the pros and cons of both, ask for a free trial, and document what each company has to offer. Never rush your decisions, and always listen to your clients. This brings me to the other quote that inspires me: "Grow your world around your customers, and more customers will grow around you." Always ask for input, advertise sites that clients can provide feedback, and start a community forum! You'll be able to interact with your clients, while knowing more about them. Also, another recommendation is to have a billing software. My personal favorites are WHMCS and Blesta. They'll automatically send out invoices, and they are more powerful than ever. My last recommendation is to have a live chat software installed on your site. I personally have LiveZilla, and it's free for one operator. You can even track where your visitors are, send chat invitations, and even friendly redirect them to another page if they're lost. It's a great tool, and one of the many great tools available for free. I'm going to work on a web hosting series here on the Forum Promotion Blog, so be sure to watch out for that as well! Are you a staff member at any other forums or websites? I'm only a staff member at the forums that I own, which are PromotionBB, WebHostingBB, Volact Community Forums, and the Off Topic Club. PromotionBB used to be ForumConnect, but we changed our name to something more understandable. These four sites are some of the many that I own, and just about all of them have been launched at once, which may not be such a good idea, but I've been working on each site individually, and they all seemed to have finished at once! I used to work on The Admin Zone, but I was kicked off for reasons that weren't understandable to any of the staff, and I've also worked on my various collection of websites, which seems to be growing. What advice can you tell newer admins here at Forum Promotion, on what they could do to better their new forums? Try to think of something new, and a name that will stick! One reason that I changed ForumConnect to PromotionBB was the name. If you were to walk up to someone, and have them guess the niche of each forum, they are likely to guess that PromotionBB is an advertising forum almost instantly. Take your time, do your research, and choose a reliable host. I've published an article here on the blog named "Tips for a Successful Forum". There, you can read about advice that I've come up with throughout the years. Feel free to read that article as well, and your feedback is always appreciated in the comments. What would you suggest to improve Forum Promotion? It could be anything. Honestly, I don't have any suggestions at the moment! I like the direction that we are heading, and we seem to be growing and growing each month! I'd like to encourage the members to become more active in various forums, and definitely take part of the weekly FP lottery! We have a great team of staff members on board, a great variety of services to offer, and an awesome community to interact with! I couldn't be happier with FP! What are your thoughts on the Forum Promotion Blog? What kind of articles are you interested in reading? Any suggestions? I absolutely love the blog! I read just about every article on there when I have time, and I've learned a lot from users! I'd like to personally thank the Editorial Team for keeping this great resource thriving, as well as our members of FP for their submissions! I highly encourage each and every member to submit their own article! Give it a try, and see if it's something you'd like to do regularly! I personally love the member and staff interview series, as it helps me learn more about the staff here at FP, as well as our members of such a great community!
And that wraps up this weeks staff member interview! Thank you for reading this, we hope you will continue reading these every week that they are posted! Feel free to comment below on the interview. Also, feel free to ask the person that got reviewed any questions you feel like!
Hi Collin, the question I like to start off with, just like everyone else, is: what can you tell us about yourself? Hello! My name is Collin, and I am on the Community Team here at Forum Promotion. I live in the beautiful town of Anderson, Indiana, and I absolutely love being a webmaster. I own a web hosting company, work in a warehouse full time, manage websites, and happily dedicate my time to FP. I used to be a lifeguard, and I may choose to do that again next summer. I recently graduated high school, and I'm working around various positions to see what interests me best. I want to make sure that I make the right choice with what I want to major in, without taking too much time to think about it. My position at a warehouse is temporary, and was only supposed to last a week, but, it has been about a month now, and now they want to train me to drive a forklift. One of the forklift drivers was recently moved from that position, so it looks to me as if they want to directly hire me on. Anyways, I'm a busy guy, and I'm friendly as well. I love to help people out, especially webmasters. I'm not a heavy coder or anything, but I know how to help out people who have issues that I used to have in the past. If you ever need any help with anything, feel free to let me know! How has your time here at FP been? What do you like about the community? My time here at FP has been great! I love the community, and I love to see the vast variety of sites that are promoted here at FP. This forum is a great forum to take advantage of, and it's a friendly community as well! I was recently on the Package Team for a little while, but then I found out that wasn't the right position for me. But, I must say, if you ever see a topic come up for teams who are hiring, apply, even if you don't think you'll be chosen. I was suprised when I was hired on to the Package Team. I woke up the next morning, and my username was orange! If you think that you won't be added, just because of warnings, or a lower post count, apply anyways! Getting your applications in doesn't hurt, and sometimes, they'll be brought up later! Anyways, I love how much FP has grown, and I am excited to be a part of such a thriving community. I've worked on a few other forums, but, Forum Promotion is the most fun when you interact with such a great community, and a great team of staff members. What can you tell us about Volact? Volact is a web hosting company that I started about 7 months ago, and it's rapidly growing. I have experienced trial and error, just like everyone else has, but we're both improving and growing as a web host. At first, Volact only offered Shared Hosting, and that was all. Now, we're offering Reseller plans as well. We even made a deal with Blesta as well, so our licenses are cheap, without the high license reseller costs, making it both beneficial to us and our clients. We're focused on providing a 99.99% uptime guarantee, and a 100% customer satisfaction guarantee! Customer satisfaction is our number 1 priority! You can find Volact web hosting at the following URL: https://volact.com/ Do you have any advice for those of us interested in starting web hosts? I have two main pieces of advice: take your time, and don't pay for advertising. I know some people would disagree, but that's alright. I've never paid for any clients, and I'd say I'm successful as of now. There are two main quotes that inspire me the most. One is "Money = Hard Work + Time". You'll need to be patient when starting a web hosting company, and don't expect to get a lot of clients right away. Go around locally, design websites for small businesses, and then link your site in the footer, where you can also showcase your latest works. One website that I've received a lot of conversions is WebHostingTalk. You can post your topic once a week, and I'll usually get more than a few signups right away. Remain patient, and remain calm. Don't make sudden changes, and focus on what your clients want, versus what would be beneficial to both of you. Don't take the first month transferring from server to server, but instead, list the pros and cons of both, ask for a free trial, and document what each company has to offer. Never rush your decisions, and always listen to your clients. This brings me to the other quote that inspires me: "Grow your world around your customers, and more customers will grow around you." Always ask for input, advertise sites that clients can provide feedback, and start a community forum! You'll be able to interact with your clients, while knowing more about them. Also, another recommendation is to have a billing software. My personal favorites are WHMCS and Blesta. They'll automatically send out invoices, and they are more powerful than ever. My last recommendation is to have a live chat software installed on your site. I personally have LiveZilla, and it's free for one operator. You can even track where your visitors are, send chat invitations, and even friendly redirect them to another page if they're lost. It's a great tool, and one of the many great tools available for free. I'm going to work on a web hosting series here on the Forum Promotion Blog, so be sure to watch out for that as well! Are you a staff member at any other forums or websites? I'm only a staff member at the forums that I own, which are PromotionBB, WebHostingBB, Volact Community Forums, and the Off Topic Club. PromotionBB used to be ForumConnect, but we changed our name to something more understandable. These four sites are some of the many that I own, and just about all of them have been launched at once, which may not be such a good idea, but I've been working on each site individually, and they all seemed to have finished at once! I used to work on The Admin Zone, but I was kicked off for reasons that weren't understandable to any of the staff, and I've also worked on my various collection of websites, which seems to be growing. What advice can you tell newer admins here at Forum Promotion, on what they could do to better their new forums? Try to think of something new, and a name that will stick! One reason that I changed ForumConnect to PromotionBB was the name. If you were to walk up to someone, and have them guess the niche of each forum, they are likely to guess that PromotionBB is an advertising forum almost instantly. Take your time, do your research, and choose a reliable host. I've published an article here on the blog named "Tips for a Successful Forum". There, you can read about advice that I've come up with throughout the years. Feel free to read that article as well, and your feedback is always appreciated in the comments. What would you suggest to improve Forum Promotion? It could be anything. Honestly, I don't have any suggestions at the moment! I like the direction that we are heading, and we seem to be growing and growing each month! I'd like to encourage the members to become more active in various forums, and definitely take part of the weekly FP lottery! We have a great team of staff members on board, a great variety of services to offer, and an awesome community to interact with! I couldn't be happier with FP! What are your thoughts on the Forum Promotion Blog? What kind of articles are you interested in reading? Any suggestions? I absolutely love the blog! I read just about every article on there when I have time, and I've learned a lot from users! I'd like to personally thank the Editorial Team for keeping this great resource thriving, as well as our members of FP for their submissions! I highly encourage each and every member to submit their own article! Give it a try, and see if it's something you'd like to do regularly! I personally love the member and staff interview series, as it helps me learn more about the staff here at FP, as well as our members of such a great community!
And that wraps up this weeks staff member interview! Thank you for reading this, we hope you will continue reading these every week that they are posted! Feel free to comment below on the interview. Also, feel free to ask the person that got reviewed any questions you feel like!
