Starting a Succesful Forum
How To Create A Successful Forum
Hello I have decided to take a few hours of my time to write up
a how to on creating a successful forum, these days there are
hundreds if not thousands of forums launched each day and I bet
more the 80% of them over the next month will shut down. This is
because making a forum is just as hard as making a web site if
not harder as there is no real content to get visitors attracted
what you need is a great design and active members to be on your
way to having a forum in which you can receive an income and
maybe even live off selling advertising and getting members to
pay to signup.
Choosing A Theme:
When choosing a theme make sure you are knowledgeable in that
area as most users will be looking for someone to answer there
questions and if the admin cant it kind of sets the theme for
the rest of the board and you will end up failing in your quest
to becoming a successful webmaster/forum owner. Before choosing
a theme make sure you have a look at the market I can tell you
right now setting up a webmaster forum or domain forum unless
you have funds in which to spend then you are wasting your time
there are to many out there and the market its flooded but by
all means if you have a great idea then go for it as they are
very profitable if you manage to get members.
Buying A Suitable Domain:
Okay the second step in setting up a forum is buying a domain
depending on your theme this will be different but try to limit
the amount of words to at most 3 and try and use the following
words after the theme, forum, chat, discussion, board, talk if
not you may need to think of a catchy word that goes well with
what you want. Choosing a registrar is fairly easy as there are
about a million out there these days but my favourite is
DomainSite it provides cost effective and easy to manage
features for your domain, they also allow you to use Paypal as a
source of payment as well.
Choosing A Forum Software:
One of the hardest things you will come by before setting up
your forum is choosing what software you are going to use with
your forum, the main 3 which are widely used today are
Vbulletin, PHPbb and Invision Power Board. All of which have
there good's and bad points I will give you a brief overlook at
them but before going ahead with one I suggest you read abit
more about the features before setting one up. Ill start with VB
(Vbulletin) this is used a lot because of its great reputation
especially within business and webmaster related sites, this is
due because it is a very safe and well updated software which
gives buyers probably the most advanced bulletin board on the
market to date, although it sounds great it does have some flaws
this mainly is its price tag for a leased licence (one year) it
is $80 usd and $160 usd for an owned license there are also
other optional fees but don't need to be bought. Another non
free bulletin board is Invision Power Board which retails for
$185 usd this offers like Vbulletin a well made and updated
forum software which you mainly see used in gaming and graphics
forums as a lot of the mods and free skins are dedicated to
those themes. Then we have the most used forum software on the
web PHPbb it is a free but yet still advanced and well made with
updates regular brought out, if you are on a low cost budget
this is the way to go. Overall I prefer to use Vbulletin over
the others but this is just a personal choice and offers me the
needs that I want from a forum software and I don't mind paying
the extra dollars for. But like I said before making a choice
read a bit more about them by searching in google, msn and yahoo
to find out what they all offer I can only tell you what I think
but that's not the option every body chooses really depends on
your budget and type of forum you intend to set-up.
Attracting Members Without Paying
But before you can do this there are many months of hard work
recruiting and getting new members, when I started when there
wasn't sites and services such as Google Adwords or Paid Post
programs which can help you get steady traffic and members for a
pretty reasonable price, so we had to find other ways this
usually involved posting on other forums not blatant advertising
though as this will usually get you band and have your post
deleted not giving much exposure for the time it took you to
sign up and post. I found the best way was to add your site into
your signature and post topics and replies that had to do with
your subject, forget posting about anything as this will only
waste your time and have minimal effect, take your time to make
larger and more detailed posts also as more people will read and
contribute to your topic on larger forums you can get up to 500
unique visitors from one post not even having your sites link in
the text just as a signature, always make sure it is a different
colour try reds, blues and greens these aren't to bright that it
deters viewers but still catch's there eye. I also found adding
the hyperlink into a form of text this makes the advert look
nicer and tells them a bit about the site before going to the
forum, this allows you to get only those wanting to be apart of
your community and are related to the advertising that you may
have on your page. Over the last few months there has been also
an increase of free forum directories try and add your forum to
as many as you can this will improve your search engine rankings
whilst receiving more visitors in the mean time.
Attracting Members By Paying:
There are many ways to advertise on the internet these days but
many don't work and are a waste of time and money that's why I
will try and lead you in the right direction and give you my
thoughts on what is the best method of getting a successfully
forum for the lowest cost. First off Adwords, this method of
advertising can be great if you have an established forum with
regular posters and members its also cost effective (depending
on keywords) and easy to do if you have a credit card on hand.
Don't get me wrong this could be a great way to get members to
your forum at the early stages but I don't believe it's the best
way at this point of time. One way I have found to be very
successful is www.PaidPosts.com this provides a cost effective
way to not only get members on your forum but to get posts which
people will search for on search engines, find via friends and
will want to respond to giving you more members and helping to
create your active forum. Although some places do not provide
detailed posts but just 3 word replies which really do nothing
for getting members apart from deterring people as the forum
will look spammed, and you don't want this so early on you will
have enough of this later on in your forum. Another way is one
of the most common seen on the internet Banner Advertising this
is where you either buy or trade banner spots on another forum
or site, usually you will try and advertise on a site with the
main topic related to your forum to maximise your CTR (click
through rate). The best way to go about this is to find a friend
or someone via another forum/chat room and purchase a spot for a
small amount of team and report how well its doing by the number
of click throughs to the number of new members if its not
looking to good move on until you find something you think
works, there's no point advertising if you don't get anything in
return it will just be a waste of money in the long run.
Making Money From Your Forum:
One of the main reasons people decide to make a forum is to make
a profit or a return by doing something they enjoy and have an
interest in, this is quite common and a lot of people actual do
make a living from doing so but it does involve a lot of time
and dedication, don't expect to wake up the next morning with
thousands of dollars in your account from setting one up. There
are many ways to make money from your forum it would take me
days to list them all but I will list the main ones, first of
Google Adsense you would have seen this been used many times
before on sites and forums you have seen you may not know it
well but it is a box like shown on www.ArcadeBay.com to the top
right of screen, it can be seen many ways to find out more
please have a look at www.Google.com/adsense set-up your account
and simply add it to your board somewhere preferable in sight of
your visitors and members this will improve the revenue made and
help you put money back into the forum. It is very easy to
customize and edit to suit your forums colour, size and it
automatically adds ads related to your forums theme this
improving the amount of clicks. Another way is Yahoo Publisher
Network which also provides you with a service that like
Google's, I personally haven't used this but I have heard the
amount per Click is higher giving you more money per click but
have found to get less clicks, this giving you the choice to use
what you think will better fit your forum. One way that has been
used probably the most of the last 4-5 years is banner
advertising allowing people to pay upfront for a spot on your
forums pages whether it be just the index or site wide this is
up to you, there is no current rate for what you should charge
this should be up to you depending on amount of members, hits,
posts a day. I found it better to list services, items related
to your theme better then other things even though you get the
same amount of money but it seems to make your forum look more
professional, so you wouldn't list computer games on a car
forum. There are also thousands of referral programs out there
where you receive a commission based on item sold and amount of
clicks I'm not going to list them all but try searching for
referral programs, affiliate programs in your preferred search
engine, I'm sure you'll find something that will fit in quite
well with your up coming community.
Recommended Sites:
Here are a list of sites and links to them which you may find
useful when setting up your forum, make sure you have a look at
them as these have helped me over the years and I'm sure will
help you improve or even help you start a successful forum. I
will list them in order from what I have said above so it'll
help you sort through them a bit easier.
Registrars:
www.DomainSite.com www.Godaddy.com www.NameCheap.com www.Enom.com
Forum Software:
www.Vbulletin.com www.InvisionBoard.com www.Phpbb.com
www.yabbforum.com
Webmaster Forums:
www.SitePoint.com www.Namepros.com www.forums.digitalpoint.com
www.TheAdminForum.com
Paid Advertising Services:
www.PaidPosts.com www.AdBright.com www.adwords.google.com
www.searchmarketing.yahoo.com
Revenue Programs:
www.google.com/adsense www.publisher.yahoo.com www.Adbrite.com
Thank You for reading this article! This is a free article you
are allowed to publish it on your site but please do not get rid
of any content you may add your own though.
Morgan ( www.PaidPosts.com Owner )
You can contact me about this article via my e-mail adress
Admin[at]PaidPosts.com