Hello Shawn, I'd like to start of by thanking you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to take part in this interview, so lets begin: So, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? My name is Shawn and I live in San Diego. How much time do you spend managing the Digital Point forums per day? Depends on what needs to be done... some days 0 hours, other days 18 hours. What inspired you to start DigitalPoint Solutions? Just needed a way to sell software really. If you were to start another forum, what niche would it be in? I wouldn't. The only reason we started a forum was to support customers/users that we already had. We just needed a support venue. How much hard work and dedication did it take to make DP a success? Not sure really, we don't do things to try and make the site a success. Mostly we build things that *we* want. Some of those things we later decide to let other people use too. Some examples: http://tools.digitalpoint.com/tracker.php Largest search engine position tracking tool (about 100,000 users tracking historical changes for 3,000,000 keywords). Originally it was just for myself because I needed it. Showed it to a few people, and they really liked it so then I had to go back and make users for it (there were no users initially since it was just for me). http://tools.digitalpoint.com/phonehome.php A system to locate a stolen computer (or spy on someone using it when you are away). Was made after my sister's car got stolen with her computer in it... and just thought, "Man it would have been nice if the computer would contact us so we knew where it was..." Later that afternoon, it was done being built. http://advertising.digitalpoint.com/ Digital Point Ads started because we needed a way to sell advertising space directly, but also didn't want the hassle of collecting money or placing ads manually. When we launched it, it was solely "In-House Advertising" for digitalpoint.com. After advertisers started using it, they loved it and started asking if they could use it to sell ad space on their site. We went back and rebuilt it so it's a universal advertising marketplace that any site can use. So now instead of digitalpoint.com being THE site it serves ads for, digitalpoint is just A site it serves ads for. Do you have any hobbies? Just the normal stuff like snowboarding. Mostly I code a lot for fun as a hobby. I made this a few nights ago when I was bored. http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=271540 Oh yeah, I also lose at Starcraft II once in awhile. Did you design the DP forum's theme yourself? It really just based on the vBulletin default theme. I'm not one to change things or add things just for sake of doing it. If it serves a purpose or makes something better in some way, then sure. That being said, yes... all the little changes/tweaks we have made were done by me. Lastly, do you have any plans for the future? There are always things on my "to-do" list, so I guess yes. Do you have any advice for new forum owners? Revolve your forum around your site, don't revolve your site around your forum. A forum should be one part of a site, not the site itself. If you are starting a forum because you think the forum itself is going to make a lot of money, you are better off putting the same energy into a different type of site. You will make more money with less effort. If you have an actual NEED for a forum (like in our case we needed a support venue for users that we already had) then just build what you need. As soon as someone starts thinking they are going to make a lot of money with it, they probably won't. Aside from owning Digitalpoint and it's associated services do you own any other websites? Really just supporting sites/domains... www.digitalpointads.com for example. Has owning the worlds largest webmaster forum brought you any outside recognition in the real world? Nope, thank God.
