Ever Created Your Own Forum?

[Dan Da Man]

Hey guys, I was wondering if any of you have started a forum. Where do I even start? Would you recommend it? Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

 

[luckyg]

I haven't started a forum...its like a website creation...

 

[extremephp]

I have one, which I started few weeks back, and I am about to make one today or tommorow, which is a local forum, and will be a hit in no time.

Bought 2 Vbulletin licences. Got some friends together, and thats it. Better late or never. Forums are far far better money makers than blogs.

 

[fizzik]

Do you have an interest/topic for this forum?

Myself and a few friends have run one that has been going strong since 2006.

If people have a genuine interest in what your forum is about and you get it out there and promoted you might be surprised.

 

[jsnow]

I had a big forum once. I used vBulletin because the community and addons are really nice.

One inside I'd share is that it's really hard to start a community. Like REALLY hard. So before you do anything, consider how you're going to get people in and get them coming back for more after that. Otherwise it's just a waste of time.

 

[professorrosado]

I've started a few - one, a mega-forum. The best advice I can give you is to look for simplicity and flexibility. Outside of looking for a forum script that otherwise would be amenable to your forum's niche, you need a niche.

You should look at a forum just like any other website. The same things you need to do for a website, you'll want to do for a forum.

Look to monetize with CPA (until you get paid banner ads) and clickbank text ads.

Forums need posts daily and promotion.

Do a survey of other forums with high traffic and see why they're getting that traffic - see what you need to include in your own forum.

And the rest I'll leave to other members to add.....

 

[professorrosado]

I have one, which I started few weeks back, and I am about to make one today or tommorow, which is a local forum, and will be a hit in no time.

Bought 2 Vbulletin licences. Got some friends together, and thats it. Better late or never. Forums are far far better money makers than blogs.

I would have to agree and know for a fact that most forums are not monetizing creatively as they should. A forum can make more money than a blog hands down - you just have to set it up right and then let 'er rip!

 

[Dan Da Man]

How are you guys generating traffic? SEO, social media, any other blackhat ways? Also, would you suggest to go super niche?

 

[random227512]

I've had many forums over the years.. I had like 4 atleast lol.. most of them were sport based.. 2 of them were huge and the others I never really ever thought about monetizing.. but yeah there's great money in forums.. keeping them regularly updated with new post's everyday and getting a good community is not easy... well atleast now nowadays.

Good luck.

 

[Jeevs]

Can anyone share his/her solid plan of promoting a forum?

+5 rep waiting...

 

[Krazy Kitty]

Can anyone share his/her solid plan of promoting a forum?

+5 rep waiting...

Choose a niche without a forum community. Try to get the keyword for that niche (better than keyword + forum or board. Skin it nicely. Apply seo addons. Create about a dozen different fake accounts and begin talking to yourself with the accounts. Create related niche accounts on twitter, facebook, yahoo groups, and anywhere else like those sites. Promote your forum with the fake characters. Easy peazy, lemon squeezy.

 

[extremephp]

A forum doesnt really need anything to be spend on promotion as long as there are no huge competitors.

For my local forum that I am making, I have 4 partners, which brings in 10 members for the start. Just get an seo addon to make the urls right, and thats it. Add in contents, and the members should generally bring in more members.

BlackhatSEO makes the forum looks cheap. Once it stands awesome, no one would like to see 10k spam comments say hey, checkout my blahblah forum and so.

 

[thinkdevoid]

While I understand vBulletin is where its all at, but why is it that nobody talks about PHPBB out of curiousity? I always thought that the platform wasn't half bad when compared to Vbulletin.

Also, what happens if some blackhat-related/sensitive/copywritten topics occur? Would you need offshore/special hosting?

 

[extremephp]

While I understand vBulletin is where its all at, but why is it that nobody talks about PHPBB out of curiousity? I always thought that the platform wasn't half bad when compared to Vbulletin.

Also, what happens if some blackhat-related/sensitive/copywritten topics occur? Would you need offshore/special hosting?

I run it on an offshore server even though I am not planning to go deeply into killing copyrights

And Vbulletin is the stuff. Phpbb and all the rest comes next.

 

[random227512]

Phpbb is just as good as Vbulletin if run correctly.. also did I mention it's 100% free!?.. people usually say it's biggest problem is security holes etc.. but that was fixed long ago.. phpbb is underrated and extremely good IMO.. I've used it aswell as Vbulleting and IPB.

 

[wgn_white]

Hey guys, I was wondering if any of you have started a forum. Where do I even start? Would you recommend it? Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

I have last time it's about friendster profile layout.
But since friendster is dead, so do the forum.

During that time I am using SMF and have around 13K members with 30K visits per day.

It's harder to run a forum than ordinary website blog.

I have one, which I started few weeks back, and I am about to make one today or tommorow, which is a local forum, and will be a hit in no time.

Bought 2 Vbulletin licences. Got some friends together, and thats it. Better late or never. Forums are far far better money makers than blogs.

I would have to agree and know for a fact that most forums are not monetizing creatively as they should. A forum can make more money than a blog hands down - you just have to set it up right and then let 'er rip!

My friends, during the time that I have a forum with massive active members I hardly monetize it since the visitors usually members who are not ads blind.

This unpleasant experience have holding me back from creating another forum in the future.

What kind of monetisation that you guys do?

 

[Jeevs]

so you guys choose the topic of your forum by your interest or you research for keyword?

 

[SahL]

so you guys choose the topic of your forum by your interest or you research for keyword?

Interest/Expertise IMO.



Eg: if your an Admin of a SEO forum and you dont know whats SEO, that would be pathetic.

In the initial days of the forum an admin needs to be active for some months atleast and give usefull feedback.

 

[HostStage]

I still have one which would deserve a renewal.

I made it a killing at launching. The method i used was a blog based forum in the domain i liked the most. (news around internet)

SO basically, i have added on my blog some ID to connect to hotspot and to get free internet it was a huge success. So i build a forum around it with the rule more your post more the ID are safe.

I used to have in the first weeks of launching hundreds of subscription a day and hundred of posts. (5k uniques a day)

I would that way seriously recommend to offer something unique to tease,

And I would vote for Vbulletin too.

 

[Nookie Monster]

Like Dan I have toyed with this idea as well. Hopefully others who have been a success with a forum will add to the thread.

I think that if you look at successful forums like this one you could get some good ideas of what works and doesn't.

One question I have is..... Would it be better to flesh it out on your local machine or try to do it live on your host in real time?