Hey guys, well i have a website which gets a stable amount of visitors no need to display how many. My idea has always been to attach a forum on to the site for people to discuss the niche, however i am not sure when to start this. Should there be a certain number of visitors first before i try to set up a forum, on the site? Will The site is an informational site on a particular niche and my plan is to add a forum on to it.
I've done it both ways--launching a forum right from the start and launching one when my site is already established. Personally, I'd recommend the latter, as any successful forum requires a good amount of posting and activity, and in order to get that, you need enough visitors. I'd say if you're getting at least 200 unique visitors a day, it's a good idea to start a forum. I'd recommend vBulletin or SMF forum software.
I would agree with TerrificContent. It is very hard to get a forum started if you don't have the traffic for it. I tried to start a forum too early and now it is just sitting there waiting for me to start promoting it again.
I didn't start mine until I had at least 75,000 visitors a month. It's not really all that easy convincing people to sign up for a message board. My message board has been up for 2 months now, and I only just have 600 registered members. 600 out of 75,000 isn't really that much.
Forum requires a lot of people...At least 100 that will visit it continually...The more the better...
Ouch that seems very low, sorry to sound perhaps offensive but how can you only have 600 out of 75,000 people a month.
I started my forum with just one member... me.... I kept posting threads as if they were blog-posts... Today, my forum has 2500+ members. Number of visitors is not important. If you have really useful information, people will comment and ask questions. The community will get active slowly.
get some autoposters to start up your forum .You'll get many more people to sign up if they see something there. Or post up some information that is unique to the forums. That way, you'll get more signups
I had limited success by using a blog/forum. Basically, i wrote articles and submitted them to certain sites with a link to the forum. I had no time to run it though. make sure u have enouth time to moderate/improve/post/write,etc... agree with mukesh
I always think that before I start a forum I have to have people active on my website. Like I run a blog, and I want them to be active like commenting, participating in polls, etc.
I have recently done what your talking about, my site was getting around 2000 uniques a month, i thought that was pretty good so i launched aforumhowever in a monthits semi active but only has around20 members so i would recommend atleast 10,000 uniques per month really.
forums are difficult...many end up with a small number of posters who are antagonistic to newcomers. It is difficult to determine how to manage them properly... I ain't gonna ever fool with one...
Ok, I agree with your first point. But most difficult to manage once established?? Forums are so popular because once you have established it, the forum will grow passively with very little effort. That's what attracts so many to run a forum.