Hey, what's up guys? This is Seth from retipster.com.
I wanted to let you know about a pretty huge new chapter of retipster.com.
And that is a free public forum that we're adding to the site.
So this is something that I've spent well over a year working on
dealing with different developers
and overcoming all kinds of obstacles I never thought would be an issue
when putting together a forum.
But we're finally there.
This is what the forum looks like.
You can find this at retipster.com/forum
Go figure.
It looks pretty basic right now.
So if you want to check it out, and if you want to register and sign up, again, it's free.
There's really no reason not to.
Just come here, click on register and you can put in your full name, email address, pick a username.
And I will say, just to kind of explain it,
the idea behind this forum is to set proper expectations.
So we want you to use your full real name when you sign up.
So don't like hide behind some fake username
or pretend to be somebody you're not, but just be yourself.
Put your real information in here.
And as soon as you sign up, the first thing you should do is head over here,
to profile and add a picture of yourself.
A real picture of who you are so we can see your face and know that you're a real person.
If you want to put a little background picture up there, you can do that as well,
but it's really easy to do this stuff.
Just go over here and click edit, and you can add or change your picture.
You can put your website URL, you're more than welcome to do that.
If you have a website, put your location, really short bio, because it has to be short.
It can only be up to 160 characters.
So it's kind of like Instagram or Twitter,
where it's not like you want to write a novel about yourself,
but just very basic details so we know who you are.
And if you want to have a signature that shows up at the end of every post you put on the site,
you can put whatever you want in there,
whether it's your website URL, or a quote, or you name it, it's up to you.
When it comes to how this forum works,
so it's pretty intuitive up here.
This little home icon will bring you to the forum homepage.
This next one over is the category page.
So you can see all the different categories.
This little clock icon is where you can see all the most recent posts
that have appeared here on the forum.
This next one over is popular.
So you can see the ones that are getting
the most traction and traffic and votes and that kind of thing.
Then over here for unread, those are all of the posts that you have not read yet.
And as you can see here, I've read them all.
So I've got nothing showing here.
If you want to create a post, it's really pretty simple to do.
I'll show you how that works.
You just click on this, "Create Post" button and then go ahead and select the category right here.
So I'm going to make this an off topic one.
So I'm going to put a little bit of information there.
I'll go find an image and upload it,
just like this, put it right there.
And there's the image.
And that's really all you have to do. Then submit this thing.
And there is my post right there.
And obviously, hopefully other people will see this in chime in and reply
with maybe pictures or just even names of houses that they thought were cool.
Just to kind of keep the conversation going.
And it's as simple as that.
And some other stuff I wanted to show you just in terms of what you can do with this forum.
So similar to Facebook, if you did want to post a video URL here, you could do that as well.
Just click on that little video icon, find the video embed code and put it right here, or the YouTube link.
You can do it like that.
You can also put a reaction GIF in here
which works pretty much the same way it does on Facebook.
You just type in whatever kind of reaction you're looking for,
and it'll give you some options and you can pick a good one, put it in there.
And granted you do have to put some text in here or the forum will think you're trying to spam it.
So you'll probably have to say something. And there you go.
So it's as simple as that.
And something else that's kind of cool about this.
If you're at all familiar with the website Reddit, it works kind of like that
and that when you go to one of these topics
or when a bunch of people have already replied to it,
you'll probably notice some of these up and down arrows.
And these are the ones that other users have seen
and either up voted or down voted that reply.
And the reason that's important is because
say, if we've got a really, really long thread here
with maybe hundreds of different replies to the initial post here,
well, as other users start going through this,
and upvoting the replies that the community finds most helpful,
you can sort this so that the best ones show up first at the top.
And that's really a big deal because then you don't have to like read every single post
to try to find the one that actually has the most value,
because this will just sort it automatically that way.
Or if you want to, you can also sort it by the latest posts first
or the oldest posts first, it's kind of up to you.
And this is also kind of like how comments on YouTube videos work as well,
where like the most upvoted comment will show up right at the top.
I've always found that really helpful.
And I wanted this forum to work the same way.
So it's kind of a cool little thing it can do.
There's also a little a chat functionality here where you can chat with other people
that you're friends with on the forum.
So you can see this really meaningful conversation I had with Jaren there.
This is also a totally mobile responsive forum.
So you can do this on your phone,
it should work just as well as also these notifications here.
And anytime you get tagged or mentioned or anything like that in the forum
you can have those show up and you can also search the forum for pretty much anything you want
based on the category, who posted it, what tags were mentioned,
it kind of let you play with that to your heart's content.
And if you do want to go back to the main original REtipster website,
you can just click on the logo up here and it'll shoot you right back to the website.
So it's pretty intuitive, pretty easy to use, I think for the most part.
And if you encounter any errors or problems,
or if there's anything about it that you just don't like how it's working,
let me know about that.
And maybe we can take that into consideration as we do our future updates.
And that's another thing is that this forum is definitely not going to look like this forever.
I think as time goes on and as we gain more insight into
how to make this thing work better for the community,
it'll probably start to look different.
So it'll actually be kind of fun in a year I don’t know, 2025 to look back at this video
and see how different the forum looked and worked
compared to how it's going to look in the future
as this thing continues to get updated and improved.
So again, if you want to get involved with this, and I really hope you do,
I'd encourage you to head over to retipster.com/forum
click on register, sign up for your free account and start posting.
And along those lines, I also want to just kind of lay out some expectations
in terms of what you should and shouldn't use this forum for.
So, first of all, some really good ways to utilize this forum is to do things like
asking good questions, questions that maybe don't have an easy answer
or that you've tried to figure it out on your own and you just can't do it.
Questions that other people most likely have.
Those are perfect things to post on this forum.
Also utilize this unread feature to check for questions that other people are asking
that you might be able to have an answer to and help other people.
And I'll tell you that back when I was first starting retipster.com
this was a huge way that I helped build my brand.
It was by going to different forums and looking for people that I could help,
like funny people who were stuck and I knew the answer very, very well.
And I left really long detailed responses.
They really gave people like actionable advice they could use.
And that kind of stuff went a really long way
in terms of building myself up as an authority,
as somebody who just knew what they were talking about.
So if you've got a blog or a podcast or YouTube channel
coaching business, chorus book, whatever that you're trying to build an audience for,
this can be a great place to do that in a non spammy way.
So the idea in your responses shouldn't be to plug your thing or promote your website,
because if that's all your response is going to be,
we're probably going to remove that response, honestly,
because it's kind of spammy. It's not really helpful.
It's more about promoting yourself.
Try to make your responses, just focus on helping other people.
Because believe me, there's this thing called karma.
And the more you selflessly help other people, people will want to know more about you
they'll want to do deals with you.
They'll want to get more engaged and acquainted with your brand.
So try to just keep that in mind.
And also in terms of ideas of stuff you can post
that's going to be helpful to the community
I think any kind of like review on whether it's a course or a book
or a website, software service, you name it.
If there's anything that's been helpful or unhelpful to you
in the real estate industry,
we have an entire category all about reviews.
Reviews and recommendations.
Just click on that, create a post and let the world know about your experience.
The more details, the better.
And also, if you have any kind of a case study,
if there's a deal you've done recently that went well or went terrible.
Or even if you've tried something like maybe a new marketing strategy that worked well
or just like totally fell flat and did not deliver.
Any kind of information you can share about what happened,
what made it work well or work terribly,
all that stuff is helpful.
And we do have a case studies section as well, where you can post that kind of stuff.
You can already see one that I posted here where I was just talking about
the biggest mistake I ever made and why I made that mistake
and also encouraging other people to leave similar replies.
So this is a perfect example of how we can all help each other
and learn and get better based on other people's real life experiences.
And also just another thing to keep in mind with any posts you put on this forum
or any reply you leave is that everything you say in this kind of forum
is kind of like a little advertisement almost in a weird way,
showing people that, "Hey, this individual is a smart person.
They know how to think through their questions and their answers.
They know how to offer real legitimate, helpful feedback."
Or it can say, "Hey, this person doesn't think things through very well."
Or they don't know how to offer helpful feedback,
or this person is just a salesman trying to hawk their stuff at people all day long.
I mean, just think through the responses and the questions and answers
you leave on this kind of forum.
Because it can legitimately build a huge reputation
and brand and business for you if you do it well,
or it can just kind of let the world know,
"Hey, this person isn't really that helpful."
So they're not worth paying attention to.
So when you do leave responses, try to make them meaningful and helpful
and actually worth something.
Like, don't just say "Cool. Reply".
But like, "Cool. This was helpful because of XYZ".
Like actually elaborate and put substance in the stuff that you put into this kind of forum,
because the more substance you can include, the more it's going to help other people.
And the more it's going to help you build a name for yourself
or network with other important people,
find other people to do deals with and partner on.
It can go a long way if you really put effort
into doing this kind of a forum posting the right way.
Again, I hope this is helpful to you wherever you're at in your real estate investing journey.
I hope this is a platform that lives on for a lot of years to come.
And it helps many, many people along the way.
And again, if you have any thoughts on the user experience,
if anything is ever broken or not working,
or if you're ever seeing errors,
chances are we're also seeing the same errors, but you can feel free to let us know
if you have any suggestions for how we can improve this thing.
Believe me, we have dozens of our own ideas already,
but this stuff just takes time and money to implement.
But if you have any strong opinions on ways this could be improved,
you're more than welcome to let us know and we'll certainly keep all that in mind.
So thanks again for following along with REtipster,
I really appreciate having your attention and your engagement
and hopefully this will just continue to enrich the experience for everybody.
So, thanks for watching.
I appreciate you and I'll see you in the forum.