Hello, I have a site with ~15.000 registered users and ~50 new users pro day. It is a small development portal. I'm thinking to setup a forum, but I don't know if it worth the effort. Maybe the moderation time will be to big and traffic increase is low. What is your experience?
You can do that. I am sure that if you have lots of members you can get a couple of those who will be willing to moderate the forums with you.
It depends. If you are not going to make any money from it or use it as a marketing tool for your current site then setting one up will just mean that you would be doing alot of work for nothing. But if you know how to make money from it plus use it as a marketing tool for your current site, then it can be worth it.
Hi , Just make sure to go for a forum thats fully SEO friendly... So that you're titles of forum threads appear in the URLS.. So you get (for example) http://forums.digitalpoint.com/general-marketing/Is-it-worth-to-start-a-forum.html and not http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=449976 Im not saying this is bad for DP but its better for you starting from scratch and building.. Also ensure that you blend the forum to match your site and that theres a google sitemap mod for it... vBulletin used here at DP is excellent ( from what ive used here..) and you can buy SEO mod somewhere...... Or Maybe phpBB http://www.phpbb.com/mods/ You are also going about this the correct way , get the users first and then give them a forum where theyll create the content for you Ive seen sites try this the other way around... Sorry if ive ranted... You probably knew all this anyway!
The goal would be to increase site traffic and so site revenue. However as the income is not so high I can't pay for moderators. Maybe I will setup a PhpBB and let's see what happen after some month.
I'd go for a forum too - it's all about community these days, and I'd imagine the subject of development and the visitors are presumably IT people would probably get people back to the site more frequently. IME it can take some work to get conversations going initially, but once there's a reasonable amount it'll be good.
with that many members i would do it.. I started a forum when my site had around 4,000 members and it took-off immediately. All that user-generated content will get you more SE traffic - just make sure the forum-page URLs are SEO Friendly.
Well, if you have lots of traffic on your forums you increased the value of your website by quite a bit just from that. If it really is busy, then you can just make regulars moderators.... it really isn't that difficult I don't think. I run a community based forum right now where everyone is almost like family. It requires minimal moderation, and only on hot-button highly debateable topics does it need moderating at all.
Forums are a great place for people to talk about your site, or the topic that your site is about. Although it's unlikely you'll make any money directly from adding a forum, it should keep some users coming back and encourage new users to join. Although moderation and whatnot often needs sorting, if you can get it off the ground there's often a few members that are willing to moderate it for free. Once you've reached that stage the forum pretty much runs itself.
I think that what you need to do is sit down and figure out whether or not you want to start a forum. What are you looking for here? Just a place for you to spend time? Looking to make money? Looking to expand into other areas? Forums can be started for all sorts of reasons Is it worth it? Sure it is, but only if you want to do it. If you want a successful forum but don't have plenty of time to commit to it, don't even think about starting one. Forums do take a lot of work, although having that initial userbase that you have does help.
From what I see getting a quality forum going is a lot of work. By that I mean a forum that is active and contributing to the members and vice versa. There are so many good ones like this already that starting another one may be a waste of time. Now having said that there are many benefits to having one and I have considered it myself. If my business ever slows down I may do it.
If you already have 15,000 members, make sure your forum can hook into the same sessions as whatever portal you are using because you don't want those people to sign up seperately to the forum. You need single sign-on. What is your site about? Because having a forum depends on if there are enough topics about your site to go around.
I have built many large forums and just started another one for my magazine more to give feedback on reviews and so on so doesn't necessarily need tons of members but more the better. I have had success building forums and it has come very easy for me it just takes a few months to get them going. The thing is unless it is huge you won't make much money on them.
Ya its a thing most SEOs know URL Rewriting. http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/misc/rewriteguide.html Peace!