Starting and Managing a Successful Online Forum
Online forums are a great way to interact with experienced people in various fields from all over the world. Not only do you learn many things and promote your websites but you also make friends. Every day many forums are created, most of these forums just fail to even start properly. Starting and managing a forum is way more difficult than running a blog.
Before anything you must pick the right niche for the forum, and make sure you have a lot of knowledge in that field. Then you have to pick a forum software, there are many paid and free softwares available, I recommend vBulletin as it is THE best and most popular. Then you have to pick a good design, custom made if possible and lastly some add-ons.
Now to the main stuff:
You need to get members to join. You can hold a contest, which is the best way. You can also invite your friends who can help you.
Then as an admin you yourself have to be very active and post threads which inspire and make people post. You have to post threads that not only cannot be found anywhere else but also really help people. People mainly join forums to learn new things, if you only have posts like ‘How old are you?’ it really is not going to work.
As the forum grows you have to appoint moderators, try and pick people you know. You can face many problems if you pick a bad team. You must pick friendly people who also know how to use the forum software you are using; also your moderators must contribute regularly.
Keeping the momentum going- At some point of time you will reach a stage where activity slows down. Here you just have to do something. Either you can hold contests or hire paid posters.
Now you must remember that forums are not something that you can make in a day, or a month. Successful forums take a lot of time to make. You have to keep putting in effort till the forum settles down. Promotion- Remember the more posts that take place, the more individuals will join. This is a “snowball” effect of forums, thus marketing must be done consistently and properly.
Ways of promoting your forum:
-Signature links in other forums of your niche.
-Mailing friends.
-Pay Per Click advertising.
Just like any other Internet venture, you need to take care of the hosting and maintenance of your forum. If your forum regularly has “downtime”, you will definitely lose members quickly, and a forum that has many coding mistakes will quickly frustrate all your visitors. You have to settle with a reliable host. If your forum is growing a lot, you may have to take a VPS.
You may be spending a lot on your forum. You just cannot keep spending a lot and not getting anything back in return. You have to monetize your site. But you have to keep in mind two things:
-Do not over monetize and stuff it with advertisements, as you will tick members off.
-Do not monetize it too early when you have very few members.
The best methods of advertising are private advertisements, but if your forum is new it is very tough to find advertisers. After using many alternatives, I think the best solution is Google AdSense. The rates per click is decent and you can earn even with a new forum. However, after some time people will turn blind towards these ads.
I have covered all the basics in this post and I hoped you liked it and learnt something from it.
This post was written by Farrhad A who has run many forums in the past and recently has started a new forum, Webmaster Peers. If you own a website and want to learn and interact with other website owners and developers you should join the forum.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
This is great advice for starting a forum — thanks! I started an American political forum with a friend and it was nothing but a huge pain, because we didn’t have good moderators, and were trying to be a free speech area. In hindsight, I believe clear and firm rules are a must for any forum community.
Farrhad, you have alot of experience in forums and I can tell from your post. Recently I made my own forum for a personal website that I have, and It’s been about 8 months now since it’s gone live and I already have about 210 registered members on it. Some have come and left… and some have stayed, and some have become quite loyal members. You are right it is all about momentum, and keeping that momentum. Working on a forum is hard, and it is definitely a game of patience. Even with 200 members my forum is still not yet busy.
I’d say that definitely “-Signature links in other forums of your niche.” is a great way to advertise, I know I have stolen quite a few members from a competitor forum just by having a link to my own website.
As far as monetization don’t do it early wait until you have built consistent members. People will be less likely to join the forums in the beginning if they see ads.
-Randy
The hard part of the maintenance is the moderation bit. Yeah, we can rely on people that we know to help out. But again, it still is hard especially if they are only helping you out and not business partners
I am not qualified yet to become a webmaster who can run a forum! I do belong to a few and quite enjoy the traffic there.
I was talking John Raven from DTM recently and it seemed like he was really busy and stressed managing a forum. I must say it really takes alot of hard work.
Good forum tutorial, but yet starting a successful forum is very difficult and hard hob, as it requires a lot of time. Also, a bit of luck is very appreciated
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Great tips! I agree that it takes time and dedication to make the forum a success. But once you do, the reward is worth it.
I find that creating a forum could be a good thing, but you have to manage it carefully everyday. You have some very useful information on promoting your forum, thanks!
Great tips, I have a forum of my own with around 500 members, I haven’t got around in monetizing it. I wonder if this is even enough members to start doing marketing.
That is a great experience which other people could use in their blogging.Nobody says it is easy.As everything in this life it takes energy and much time.
No doubt forums are important in blogging,it is very nice of you to explain why.
I am full of determination to start and get some kind of experience in this direction.
I didn’t start to take part in the forums,every time there kinds of obstacles to do that but I understand how important it may be.
One of my first online ventures was a forum. My theory was that the users would provide the content so it was a great model. That was naive. A forum has taken more work than many other projects I’ve developed since by far.
Great Heads up, to anyone who starts a forum! Is there more ideas, that you could share, just than contests? Also, Choosing the staff team, once forum grows, makes a great deal.
From my experience with creating forums, the hardest part is always the beginning, It’s like you are climbing the steepest part of a mountain. The best thing to do, if you are lucky enough is to get a few consistent members, that will stay on your forum. One thing though the forum creator really needs to be an active participant in the forum, and can’t just rely on the members to carry the forum.
Till then,
Jean
lmao, nice one )
There are some ideas which can really help on starting a forum. I never consider myself a very good webbuilder, and that why i want to thank you for the good advices.