u have to invest into something m8. 9$ domain and server for 6$ per month won't cut it. Come up with a budget!
This thread is completely random - do you have a forum already? Do you even know what your forum will be about? Strange... I have a forum (see sig) you can make that the biggest forum ever if you like!
Well, cash is always a nice incentive, but then you have the issue of quality. People will post meaningless posts just to get money and then you're going to have to spend time/resources for quality control. You'll end up not being able to pay them very much, not enough to make it worth people spending a lot of time making quality informative posts..
Cash incentives is a motivator, but it is not a strong motivator unless the forum owner has infinite cash. It is good for the start when the forum is empty, during that time, it is a chicken and egg issue. Giving some cash for some good forumers to post and lead the discussion will be great. That can escalate the growth of the forum. Beyond that, the forum cannot depend on these paid forumer and must depend on its own organic growth. Hopefully by that time, there will be enough great members to make the forum a success. In whatever situation, leadership and a sense of vision and mission is very important to guide the forums and its administrators to greater heights. We need a plan from you.
Hmmmm, large forum. I will stick at DP for awhile and see if this forum get's to be the largest someday.
patrner ship wasn't good always and won't be , if you accept me as boss go on i m ready to Buy vBulletin or IPB and Also host and design it , the most importantent think is uniquie content and always online members/mods
I think the best shot you have at making the worlds largest forum would be to cover EVERY SINGLE COMMON TOPIC. That means a lot of boards and sub boards and would have to be well laid out. This could possibly work because I don't think it has ever been done before and it would sure as hell draw a lot of attention if built right. And of course it means that the whole world becomes a potential member. If this is what you want to do, I am down. I have $3 with "the worlds largest forum" written all over it
Well, having spent 5 years developing forums, I think this is a bad idea because it will be impossible for you to coordinate what you have in mind... and you don't seem to have a well organized plan. That said, I'll give you an idea for what might just make this work. A long time ago, I bought a PC that had a very unique support concept. They had a forum (actually, back then it was a dial access bulletin board if you are old enough to know what that is) for users to support users. The way it worked was that any owner could place a question in the appropriate forum... hardware, software, etc. Then other members would try to answer the problem. There were moderators that would watch the threads and when an answer was found, the member who answered first would get points. Usually only one person got points, but occaisionally others would too. These points could then be used to buy real products ranging from accessories and software for the PC, to even PCs if you got enough points. It was a great concept because people would kill each other to answer the questions first. Anyways, my suggestion is to expand this concept to cover everything. You might call the site helpwithanything.com or something. Just creating a huge forum about nothing will fail. Advertisers aren't going to see value in it so there won't be any money for a long time and therefore people will quickly lose interest long before it grows. My suggested approach could be successful out of the gate if done right. Success is what causes growth.
I have a plan nearly similar to what you are saying. I dont think I should disclose it here though. 1 thing I can say is that, it is similar to your idea. Better actually.