Should I create a forum... and how?

[MiLe31]

BHW family, I am not sure where this topic belongs so I'm putting it here.

I run a few small online businesses in fields I've been working in for YEARS. They are doing okay, paying the bills, but I want to gather a bigger audience.

I already run Facebook groups for these niches, but I want something outside of FB. FB doesn't have threads, shit gets lost, and there is less value.

I'm thinking of starting a forum or two.

--

I'm okay with wordpress, but not at the programmer level. So, I'm guessing I should hire someone to help.

1.) which forum software is best? Xenforo? phpBB? P2? BBpress? vBulletin? Websitetoolbox?
2.) is UpWork the best place to hire a programmer? Any thoughts?
3.) How can I learn to market my forum?

Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated.

 

[sanliu]

Kind of ironic posting this on a forum, but aren't forums as a new business effort a dead concept?

All niches are already taken. It's like blogging but maybe worse.

 

[Pretoquis]

When i was young i really liked Invision Power Board, so maybe it's a tip for you... It's really easy to set things up and there's a lot of plugins (free, paid and nulled) in the internet...

Kind of ironic posting this on a forum, but aren't forums as a new business effort a dead concept?

All niches are already taken. It's like blogging but maybe worse.

But i have to agree with sanliu, more recently i had a cartoon series forum, witch have a good amount of people, but still lose some money on my journey

Maybe it's better to put effort in something more profitable

 

[MiLe31]

When i was young i really liked Invision Power Board, so maybe it's a tip for you... It's really easy to set things up and there's a lot of plugins (free, paid and nulled) in the internet...



But i have to agree with sanliu, more recently i had a cartoon series forum, witch have a good amount of people, but still lose some money on my journey

Maybe it's better to put effort in something more profitable

Then how do companies like this: https://www.verticalscope.com/our-verticals/automotive/

Handle so many forums if they are losing money? I just think controlling an audience, that creates content for you, seems better than blogging (creating content yourself, trying to maintain an audience yourself)

 

[MiLe31]

Kind of ironic posting this on a forum, but aren't forums as a new business effort a dead concept?

All niches are already taken. It's like blogging but maybe worse.

I appreciate both of your criticisms of the idea. I just couldn't imagine it truly being a dead concept. Like blogging, I think one just needs to find a niche that isn't saturated.

 

[arpitagarwal82]

I have been a part of some of the big forums since last 15 years. And I understand why owning a forum seems a lucrative idea. Let me give you some advice from my experience.

To start and maintain a quality forum you need to have some starting capital. You can choose to take cheap route, but it will eventually lead to failure.

Rough cost estimation:
1) Forum software: Go with vbulletin. You will certainly thank me later. Cost around $400
2) Hosting: you can use vbulletin cloud or else some managed hosting or vps. Over all,consider $100 per month in long run. Don't go cheap here. Forum downtime or slow speed will drive your users away.
3) Custom design is recommended, but you can start with free available themes. Forum design should be taken into consideration in early phase. Once established, forum members always hate the change in design. Custom design will cost $500 to $1000

So to create and maintain the forum for 1 year you will need roughly $1000 to $2000 investment.

But this is just the website part. You will need lots of time and resources to populate the forum with quality content. Cost of which depends upon your skills, efforts and strategies used.

Feel free to discuss about any information you want.

Also, which country you are from?

 

[louisalviss]

Unless you able to spend full time to manage the forum and trying to grow it as BHW , otherwise just create a Facebook group and develop it to see if it’s ok before moving to other platform.

It will help reduce the cost in the beginning and focus to grow / manage only

 

[MiLe31]

I have been a part of some of the big forums since last 15 years. And I understand why owning a forum seems a lucrative idea. Let me give you some advice from my experience.

To start and maintain a quality forum you need to have some starting capital. You can choose to take cheap route, but it will eventually lead to failure.

Rough cost estimation:
1) Forum software: Go with vbulletin. You will certainly thank me later. Cost around $400
2) Hosting: you can use vbulletin cloud or else some managed hosting or vps. Over all,consider $100 per month in long run. Don't go cheap here. Forum downtime or slow speed will drive your users away.
3) Custom design is recommended, but you can start with free available themes. Forum design should be taken into consideration in early phase. Once established, forum members always hate the change in design. Custom design will cost $500 to $1000

So to create and maintain the forum for 1 year you will need roughly $1000 to $2000 investment.

But this is just the website part. You will need lots of time and resources to populate the forum with quality content. Cost of which depends upon your skills, efforts and strategies used.

Feel free to discuss about any information you want.

Also, which country you are from?

Thank you.

-vBull was on top of my list.
-I have the capital.
-2k sounds totally doable.
-I'm from the US


Additional questions for you:

1.) Are you saying you were part of running some big forums? Do you offer paid consultation if that's the case? I really want to explore this topic.
2.) "But this is just the website part. You will need lots of time and resources to populate the forum with quality content. Cost of which depends upon your skills, efforts and strategies used." If you're talking about driving early users to the forum, I'd like to know your opinion. As I mentioned, I "own" half a dozen Facebook groups, with about 100k users in total in my niches. I could try to drive traffic away from them to my forum, but I'm not sure how easy that is.

 

[MiLe31]

Unless you able to spend full time to manage the forum and trying to grow it as BHW , otherwise just create a Facebook group and develop it to see if it’s ok before moving to other platform.

It will help reduce the cost in the beginning and focus to grow / manage only

Facebook groups aren't very useful as content gets buried. I already run 6 FB groups.

Thanks for the advice. I do have time to run a forum.

 

[Mxty]

I don't think forum niches are oversaturated, you just need to be specific.

Instead of Electric car forum -> [Brand] Electric Car Forum, type thing.

Pick a niche that is going to grow, hence the electric car reference..

 

[arpitagarwal82]

First thing first: I do not provide any paid consultation on forum management or any related topic. I dont have any financial incentive in mind while replying your thread.
It's just that I have always been fascinated with forums. I earned all my knowledge and good part of my earnings from forums.
So I have always fantasized about owning a forum (not in webmasters niche). But I am a lazy person and somehow always procrastinated the idea. But I always kept gathering information about forum building and have helped few people in the past.

Now coming to your questions:
What will drive visitors to register on your forum and become a regular member of community?
1) People will only join your forum if they feel that there is enough useful information for them.
2) People will join if somehow they feel that they will get an answer to the question they are looking for.
3) Some kind of financial incentive works the best. For example: Whenever a webmaster forum have managed a decent marketplace, userbase has exploded. So try to develop a section on your forum where people can buy/sell/trade things related to your niche.

Consider the above mentioned conditions as "threshold point". Once threshold point is reached your forum will become self growing.

But you need to work alot to reach that threshold point. It may seem that you have alot of followers/connections on FB or other communities. But they will not join your forum if you ask them. Your close friends and family won't join your forum. Trust me on this.

So you will need few dedicated people (hired by you on long term basis). Also you will need several minnions to make post on your forums (like $5 for 5 new threads and 5 new replies).

Another important aspect is spam management. You won't believe the amount of automated spam you will get. You will atleast have to check your forum for spam 5 to 6 times a day.

To be honest, you cannot create a good community just by investing money. You will need few passionate people to give their 100% for a large span of time (like 12-18 months) without any financial profit.

 

[flprocess]

vBulletin might be the most effective and strong forum software I ever used (and I used lots of them). Good luck!

 

[goku786]

BHW family, I am not sure where this topic belongs so I'm putting it here.

I run a few small online businesses in fields I've been working in for YEARS. They are doing okay, paying the bills, but I want to gather a bigger audience.

I already run Facebook groups for these niches, but I want something outside of FB. FB doesn't have threads, shit gets lost, and there is less value.

I'm thinking of starting a forum or two.

--

I'm okay with wordpress, but not at the programmer level. So, I'm guessing I should hire someone to help.

1.) which forum software is best? Xenforo? phpBB? P2? BBpress? vBulletin? Websitetoolbox?
2.) is UpWork the best place to hire a programmer? Any thoughts?
3.) How can I learn to market my forum?

Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated.

you should check Discourse if you don't care about money otherwise phpbb will help you start your forum and then you can always upgrade to something else in future after collecting knowledge about forum & how forum works

 

[mlhh2013]

BHW family, I am not sure where this topic belongs so I'm putting it here.

I run a few small online businesses in fields I've been working in for YEARS. They are doing okay, paying the bills, but I want to gather a bigger audience.

I already run Facebook groups for these niches, but I want something outside of FB. FB doesn't have threads, shit gets lost, and there is less value.

I'm thinking of starting a forum or two.

--

I'm okay with wordpress, but not at the programmer level. So, I'm guessing I should hire someone to help.

1.) which forum software is best? Xenforo? phpBB? P2? BBpress? vBulletin? Websitetoolbox?
2.) is UpWork the best place to hire a programmer? Any thoughts?
3.) How can I learn to market my forum?

Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated.

1- I have experience with vBulletin and it's easy to use as beginner.
2- upwork and fiver or even from here you can find great proggrammers.
3- Social media can help to market your forum. like creating fb groups,page.. twitter can be very usefull to creating a community at the begining..

 

[grantmedia]

In my opinion(ran everything from bbs in 90s to blogs to adult etc).... Forums are not dead and will make a come back as social media gets more regulated(governments), toxic(as we can see with all the banning).

The internet used to be seperated into little villages via forums/blogs/etc and I see a lot of people eventually getting back to that as they feel more unwelcome on social media and want a more personal experience.

Topic, niche information and activity will be the key.

Im in love with Xenforu, for SEO it just seems amazing after doing a ton of research. Also vBulletin is great just doesnt seem modern to me anymore but thats my preference. I think yoiu should GO FOR IT! Good luck.