Hello ladies (if any) and lads I am thinking to start a forum and I needed advice. Should i make my forum private with invites only or open membership the reason i am asking you guys this is because i personally think that if i make it invite only it might create a 'want' in people for them to join it as it would be exclusive and not everyone would be able to join it and i would be promoting it in the niche specific local facebook groups so i know people would want to join it! Could you guys tell me if i should make it invite only or open and why?
If you make it invite only right off the bat you won't have to much content. I agree making it invite only does create a want, but if there's no content or users on the forum it won't matter. It's better to start it off public and then when it grows a bit make it invite only. That way you'll already have a decent userbase that can send out invites as well. This is just my thoughts on it.
thank you for the quick answer. I am going to start the forum tomorrow or day after tomorrow what my plan is, its to make around 10 accounts daily on the forum (myself) and post 5 topics from each and answer randomly from each on different topics so by the end of the month i would have around 300 active users (which are all created by me) 1500 topics and around 2000 posts etc During all this time i wont advertise the forum at all at next month on the same date i will start marketing it in the local facebook niche related groups and say it is already developed private forum for serious people only. What do you think, this way the forum would have lots of content, it would look active and would look attractive would making it invite only (keeping in the mind what i just wrote now) be beneficial? Thanks for the reply i am going to make a jorney after the public launch of the forum
You have to make it an open forum, so many users are registered, and your site will be indexed in a fast time in the search engines. At that time you need autor, because it will be very many people who planted the link in your forum
You may not come around to get some more people to post on it, maybe paid posters... find some that really can post something useful. Many will only post trash!!
I ran a forum a few years ago and you should definitely keep it open, at least in the beginning. Create a bunch of accounts, stir up drama between them and people will be become interested. Of course, it all depends on the type of niche in working with. It is also helpful to join other similar forums and find deserters to join you
Forum must provide some good value to spend time on it. Take a look on BHW! Think how to make BHW better and use it for your forum
I would make it open to everyone for now and then maybe down the road see if you can not switch it to private.
Make it public in the beginning. When you get a solid user base, close it for public registrations, and put an invite code. Simple as that.
