Planning to start a forum.. - Need your help guys!

Hey guys,

I'm planning to start my own site- i.e., a forum based site, but I have no Idea which kind of forums bring in more traffic. Of course, I'm not interested in porn based forums, I say like forums where people are forced into visiting again. Please share your ideas and help me.

To add, I'm planning to use SMF, and I don't want some 180 bucks to be spent for just what others offer for free.

Cheers!

 

I've seen a lot of "model specific" automotive forums (cadilac forums, ford forums, mustang forums, etc...) grow really fast.... I'm not sure why, but it could be that there are many repair questions, custimization questions, and people just get really excited about their cars, and want to post pictures, and talk about mods, racing, and other stuff... I think it is a good niche for forums from what I've seen....

 

Vehicle forums are good. But just cause you have a forum doesnt mean people will come. Forums take time to grow. You will have to write a ton of things and just reply to yourself. I own several forums, but my best ones are PORN...You dont make much off of them either. Just an FYI

 

I agree with bestservice. Forums take forever to grow. You will have to create a few usernames for yourself and post. That way it will look like as if different people are having discussions. When I visit a new forum and see discussions between two people I'm not coming back, but if more people are involved I register and start discussing. Thats one thing you can do.

Some good ideas would be sports, cars, porn, SMARTPHONES (iphone, blackberry, palm pre, etc). Smartphones are a really good idea. I dont know how much you pay attention to this but both Verizon and Sprint just reported quarterly earnings and both of them have more subscribers with smartphones, which means more and more people will be coming online to discuss smartphones.

 

guys above are right..you need so many users to create and make discussions.i ve made 5000 posts on my forum to make it look bigger....

 

Yeah get friends to join and start discussions.

 

You should see what YOU are good at? because if you start a forum on a subject you don't have knowledge about then how can you moderate it?

If you are good at designing go for a design related forum, if you are good at fashion you should go for a fashion related forum.

 

Blackmail forums.

 

another idea is to get help from your close friends for posting....at the beginning you will need posts..

 

+1 to that.. its so very true.. no better way to say it.. dont let ppl pick what kind of forum u wanna start. make one with a subject your interested about.

 

You have to offer incentives. Be aggressive. Reward good posters by making them mods.

 

You can setup a money making forum.
Post about the way to make money each day each method.
Then i'm sure the visitor will surely visit it everyday to check out the new technique.

 

Thanks guys, I'll think about adding a vehicle section, but I don't have great interest in it. Well, I'm ready to spend some bucks on adwords, but the thing is, i want some traffic to stick. Forums are the best, though it's kinda hard to get traffic Initially.

Money making forum is currently which I'm looking forward to.

BTW what do you guys think about SMF? Is PhpBB better or should I stick with SMF?

 

Guess that u were talking about "Blackhat" forum.

 

discuss about what's hot and what's not nowadays, seek google for help.

if you want someone to help you, let me know.. ^_^

 

be ready to spend one year of ur life working hard for ur forum collecting members and posts
unless ur spending big on ur domains and promotions ur gonna be 0 for 1st 6-10 months
do some research before starting

 

I'm going to echo just about everyone here. Do the research first, be prepared to have 20 ids so that you can have phantom conversations with yourself, and traffic generation will be your big investment. You want members you will have to lead them to your forum. Offer things that people want, free information, something that makes them stay around and keep coming back.
Make sure the subject is something you know about, and you are ready to go. I would use the phpbb myself.

 

I've started several forums; If you want my advice then here it is.

Unless you have money to spend, don't start a forum. Honestly, its a big mistake and huge waste of time. Forums are one of the hardest type of sites to pull off. Trying to make money from it seems impossible, especially during the first 12 months (if it doesn't look like a ghost town by then).

If you have a unique niche or enough money to create a buzz then a forum that has "paid" memberships will make you money.

 

In all honesty, there is a HUGE difference between the "free" forums apps and the ones you pay for. I like phpBB alot, but the time spent and extra work that goes into customizing it to get it anywhere close to something like VB far outweighs that $180.

 

How guerrilla said.

Yes, I was thinking a incentive website who pay for post, referral, login, visite, by all. can be a visited website forum..

what you think memasti?