Hi. I'm looking for people who have successfully started a forum before. By successful I probably mean: - Active (people posting and discussing everyday) - At least 1000+ members - Quite a large number of posts and threads I guess I'm hoping some forum gurus can give me some advice or mentoring on my forum to get started. In return, I can mentor or teach you a thing or two about how to get started with wordpress and work with blogs. Some of my credentials: I own two blogs. One is 2 years old and have made $12 k off it so far Other one is 4 months old, 5k uniques and 11k hits a day I have a forum set up but after making multiple accounts and trying to talk to myself, it got boring. When I stopped doing that, the forum died so it would be great to get someone to guide me on how to make a successful forum. Thanks!
I have a forum that is still going strong 3 years down the line with over 13,000 members and active posts everyday. The most important advice I would give you is to create a forum on a subject that is of interest to you, something that your heart will be motivated to work at without giving up. If you try and do it on a subject that you are not personally passionate about then you're going to find it very difficult.
To kick-start a new forum you will have to use paid members. There is nothing wrong with that. You can get forum posts for as little as $0.03 - $0.05. A couple of tips, though: Set your budget and tell your posters you have a limit. Otherwise you'll end up spending more than you anticipated. Keep the number of subforums to minimum. You can always add more when your forum gets active. A long list empty subforums is sooo boring. Post actively yourself, incorporating your paid posters in conversations. Once you've reached a level when your forum starts resembling a forum slightly, switch to social networking. Go out to your friends on Facebook, Digg etc Use signature advertising on bigger forums It is all doable and achievable. Good luck!
Thanks guys. Feel free to PM me btw if you are interested in doing some kind of a mentor trade. The forum is actually for the 11k hits per day blog and the niche is Windows 7. I love Windows 7 and I'm making virtually no money on it, but I can still work on it. I just want to create a thriving community of win 7 users. It's very difficult to hire some people in this small niche because the topic is technical. But I have hired one or two here that I hope will help. I'm thinking of using some bait to lure users in by giving away Windows 7. But how will I keep the fire going after I give the prize away. I am afraid users will leave after.
Personally I had a forum like that once till I fell in love and moved away from my country blah blah. But it was in something I loved. Roleplaying, Anime and Manga. Roleplaying forums is the easiest to get started if you get a few people together and get some great content added to your forum for potential roleplayers. Also controversy sells... in South Africa a lot of people are quite religious and one day I decided to post a topic about the devil, how we perceive it etc. My topic received well over 1000 replies. I am not joking when I say this. I guess it must have been my charm that drew their attention But in general it was all fun till I decided to move to the UK and had to leave my domain and hosting back in SA. All sad >< Since then I haven't had a great forum like that again. The easiest way I got other people to join my forum was frequent normal forums and if they allowed it, I had a really nice designed signature that lead to my forum. I made friends everywhere and the easiest was when I did something new on the forum or needed ideas, I would log onto MSN, YIM and AIM and just talk to people. I always had tons of people volunteering but make no mistake, it was not easy to be socially active online. It required at least a good portion of my time. Sometimes if I found normal forums related to technical things etc. I would find a sub-forum dealing with anime or animation. I would usually post in there and sometimes I would ask people through PM if they would consider joining my site. Worked like a charm. I would never spam and only asked if people showed a genuine interest in the topics that my forum dealt with. But that is how I was recruited to a massive anime forum once myself years and years ago. The guy found me on a music related site and he saw I was interested in anime and merely sent me a message telling me about his forum, the benefits and what I will get out of it. The message was simple, not done like a pitch or anything. Just in a conversational tone and I figured...what do I have to lose. I signed up and have been member there ever since. That is also where I started roleplaying and one of my own roleplays, "Voyage of the Beast: New Beginnings ended up claiming a small award for most original and upcoming. You can see it here: http://www.animeleague.net/archives/viewtopic.php?t=91516 That site has thousands of members and they are doing something right to keep them there.
My forum gets between 1,500 - 2,500 post every day, has over 12,900 members, has over 517,000 post and around 43,000 threads. Promoting forums is a tough job. Regardless of the market you try to tap into, there will be dozens of other well established forums to compete against. To promote a forum, you have to do at least 2 things: 1. Use different promotion techniques that drives targeted traffic to your site. 2. Do something "different" with your forum. Offer a service that nobody else is. My primary promotion technique is videos. Over the past 22 months I have uploaded over 300 videos to youtube. And in return, my site gets a stready stream of targeted traffic. Another thing that I did was offer a downloads section to my members. I went out and found non copyright protected pdf files that were related to my sites nitch. In 6 months I must have uploaded somewhere around 400 - 500 files. And now, my site has a larger downloads section then other sites in my market. But I limit how many downloads members can do in 24 hours - this keeps them coming back to get more files. Make your forum visual - embed videos and upload lots of pictures. I use a photobucket account to host a lot of my images. This means I can use the same image all over my forums and only upload it once. Give the people what they are looking for. If a member comes in looking for information, go find it for them - and never post a link to where the member can get the information. This will mean that the member will leave your site and not come back - because they can get the information they need elsewhere. Write some articles and include videos and images.
Thanks for your detailed response =) I was wondering what kind of benefits he offered you and what kind of benefits I can offer my forum users / moderators? Other than the status of being a moderator and the satisfaction of being in a community, I can't think of much xD. I'm a nice guy so I guess that's a bonus. Hi and thanks for offering some great tips. The problem is that my forum is linked to a blog (located in my signature.) That means all the great content and downloads would have to be accessible through my blog. All the discussion would belong in the forum so I wouldn't be able to have some sort of a beefy downloads section, but it is a good option to think about. What do you think of the importance in using vbulletin?
Your setup is perfect for video blogging. I highly suggest you think about creating an account on youtube. Take a look around youtube and see what kind of other tech videos are out there, and then get after it. Why wouldnt you be able to have a downloads section? I have my own blog, its the latest blog post next to my name. It also acts as a portal to the forum. Take a look at it and see how I have tied my blog and my forum together using different domain names. Vbulletin is like a store front. Do you want to have a professional looking community, or do you want to have something you just threw together? I see VB as a business investment.
I am a "big-board" owner and my forum has "survived" for almost 4 years now. The reason I achieved success was because my forum became an "official fansite" for the game of which it discusses. This brings in perpetual traffic. Also the game allows us to host "official in-game events" for further advertisement. There were forums already in this niche before I got in, however I saw areas that could be improved and ran with them. I added a vb Plaza/Shop (Which is now disabled on my site) and members flocked like crazy. I also promised that the board would be ran with professionalism (which is rare because the game is catered to a kid/teen audience).
I have a forum but it's small and not succeed yet but I thing I learn from making forum is that it's hard to increase no. of members relying on search engines and seo alone. I need to know more ways to draw ppl to my forum too.