Building an online community/forum

[Yunus2011]

Hi everyone, hope your all doing well

Posting this here since this is the learning things the "hard and honest way" section, i wanted to ask about building an online community.

How do you get posters / moderators / interested people to be a part of a brand new site/forum?

Is it always money, money? Can other benefits be offered? Such as directory listings, link exchanges etc

How do you find knowledgeable and honest people who are willing to give the time and effort to be a part of the community without expecting anything in return?

Consider it being a non profit forum/site and brand new, but having a presence on the net, and being able to say I was/is a part of this is the most important part, Note:Non profit being money comes second after the knowledge and presence.

The forum is about blogging and related topics, maybe like BHW but not as cool and diverse in topic subjects.

Lets here your views people.

 

[Abstroose]

I think it's almost impossible without an already established website. My dream was to run a very active and populated forum. I've tried twice.. the second time I invested a total of about $2000 over a year. At one point I had about 20 active posters. Eventually they get bored of the same posts, same content, same members. And then one member leaves... then there's LESS activity, until eventually they all leave.

The problem is, NO ONE wants to join a dead forum. I spent so much money on paid posters, but inevitably it was just a waste of money.

Beats me how forums like DP and BHW got going..

 

[Yunus2011]

I think it's almost impossible without an already established website. My dream was to run a very active and populated forum. I've tried twice.. the second time I invested a total of about $2000 over a year.

Wow you're brave, 2000? I was planning on going in a budget of 500 and even that I thought was a lot, maybe it's just me planning a base up solution or not considering costs properly?

Wasn't you able to make anything in return for the effort you put in, I mean at least to cover expenses, that would be my personal "success" plan for the start.

Did you go in joint, or solely on your own?

Don't know but won't know unless I try.

 

[Abstroose]

Wow you're brave, 2000? I was planning on going in a budget of 500 and even that I thought was a lot, maybe it's just me planning a base up solution or not considering costs properly?

Wasn't you able to make anything in return for the effort you put in, I mean at least to cover expenses, that would be my personal "success" plan for the start.

Did you go in joint, or solely on your own?

Don't know but won't know unless I try.

I had no prearranged budget.. I was just hiring poster after poster. Most of them did a crap job. Then I managed to find a guy in the US whom created about 15 legit-looking accounts and posted up to 100 posts between them a day. I was paying him a lot. It seemed like the only way to populate my forum and make it more attractive to visitors.

I made hardly anything. $10-20 at most. I wasn't really planning on monetizing it until it was populated. However I got impatient and added Adsense to each page, but the CTR on forums suck.

I went in solely. I launched my forum, because I was a moderator on another forum which died when the servers crashed and no backups were made! I made it as a backup forum, so I was lucky because I had active members transfer to my forum.

It's very difficult.

 

[Yunus2011]

Come on guys, anyone else?

 

[NapsteR]

If you want to build an active online community you would be needing a lot of $$$ and time.

If you already have a huge list of followers then it would be very helpful. For instance, if you have a money making blog with alexa less than 20000, then you can say like sign up and start using this forum.

Then you have to rewrite the threads in other forums. Say 10000 pages at least. with 1000 fake users.

Then hire someone to post threads on long tail keywords.

Once it get little famous, then everybody will start spamming it. You need to hire some moderators to stop the spam and all..

And you also have to spend some $$$ in advertisement.

I am thinking to start a forum like this. I can hire people for low pay bcoz i live in india. But I dont have money to start now. I hope I will start with in two years.
And good luck to you too..

 

[buzz1212]

I am starting a community site with video sharing,pictures, game room,forum and their own fan page. I really think if your going to do this you need a specific niche.
Then use the social networks to find people interested in that niche. I played ball
for the University of Miami , so my passion is to bring all Hurricane fans to one spot
where we can share the love.

 

[arcadelife88]

Better to start a community with people you know well first

e.g your school community, your hobbies/activities/club whatever it is, that has backbone for your forum

even without payment, they have a place to hang out together

and while the backbone is strong enough, then start the seo to get people that you don't know to join the forum, it will makes the forum get lively

however, it's only my opinion, but sounds logical for me

 

[syek1]

I have been wanting to start a local forum. This has made me think twice though, it seems to be a lot harder than I thought. I don't want to invest huge amounts of cash and then in the end its a waste. Sounds like to much of a risk

 

[james-uk]

 

[Yunus2011]

So guys, im getting this idea that, to even start, you need well alot of money, how much would you say?

Lets assume you will put all the hard work in yourself? no hiring, no advertisements, no paid work.