You would be wrong dude, most forums are very niche orientated. You don't signup to facebook to learn more about seo.
On one hand,it's due to the popularity of the forums.People prefer to join the most famous ones to get what they want.On the other hand,the new appeared forums can't make them distinctive with those old ones efficiently and are never attrctive and without even enough promotion.Therefore,it's so difficult for them to make such a forum popular.It needs methods,time,devotion and money.
Most forums fail because of lack of users or usage. It is hard to kick start the ball rolling. So you have to make fake posts as users in order to make up a starting point where it shows activity and useful data so it attracts more users to contribute their efforts. But unless they are getting something in return, most users wont.
When I started my forum, I had only two accounts. But I hardly used them to talk to the wall. Rather my strategy was engaging my friends join me; for me that worked well.
I would have to agree with SoulzRipper as well with a few others. You need a committed group of 10-15 to help get this place going. Word of mouth is best. You also need to dedicate a lot of time and money into making it really good.
>>> "Many forum go-er want a social experience & to state their opinion and get noticed or to learn stuff. Not many forum provide this unique service." I couldn't agree more with statement from MarTh-
Thats is very true. Forums are not really big earners until they have good traffic. People who visit forums are very well-informed about online things and tend to not click on ads much.
Forums are first diffficult to run, but even when it gets some traffic it should provide people what they are looking for ! Basic requirement for a forum to survive is to get people who can keep it upto date. whether you hire them or generate some benefits for them.
I use to come accross lot of jsp forums, i like to answer but the whole registration process will take me 10 mins. So i use to skip.
Forum requires dedicated staff (like admin, mods) to keep it neat and to the point. Otherwise, spamming will spoil it. Apart from that, we need knowledgeable members to keep up the momentum and to cater to the needs of the information thirsty visitors.
The beginning of the forum is the most crucial point. You will need to advertise a lot. Pay users for posting. A lot of money has to be wasted. Using SEO, article marketing, etc will fail. No. of members and recent posts is what counts no matter it's a new forum or not.
They require a lot of micro managing. You need to check regularly for spam and also reply to every post.
Most of forum owners are greedym when they have few members thea are so cooperative but when the members grow up, they create many problems.....ban ...
Exactly, and of course it turns people off to see the same admin filling every thread just to give the appearance of activity within the forum. At least it does for me.
Activity is the hard thing. People won't get interested writing themselves unless much other people do it.