One of the hardest websites to start is a forum

I don't care what anybody says, forums are HANDS DOWN one of the hardest sites to get started! If you offer a free incentive people simply join for the incentive and never post anything. If nobody is active on the forum, nobody wants to join. If somebody can give me some good advice I would really appreciate it because I SERIOUSLY need it.

 

Using a good paid service to make the forums look active is always a good start, because like you said... no one wants to join a dead forum. Why not tie the incentive in to making posts? Or I know there is a 'Thank you hack' on VB.org install that and have whoever receives the most thank yous after a certain amount of time wins the prize?
That way you are getting posts in return for your incentive. But make sure the incentive is something that people are going to want... I see a lot of people who run forums offer prizes simply for the fact of offering them with out putting thought or anything into it.
Think to yourself, "would this motivate me to post on this new forum?"
If yes, you're golden.

 

Even I am looking at starting a couple of forums. Would appreciate if people with successful forums shared their experience in here with us all.

 

It is really really hard. I have 2 forums and the activity fluctuates a lot. It is hard indeed.

 

I have a forum started 7 months ago at www.9mb.com

It was hard at the beginning! But now it is running nice, getting new sign ups every day from the search engines!

Important to have is good SEO rankings, as it will bring very targeted traffic! Also be dedicated yourself ofcourse, as I am top poster on my own forum

Good luck

 

If you do a prises make them for # of post in a time frame. Put a spin on it where it has to be at least 10 words long. I'm doing one on my forum and I'm getting about 80 post a day.

If your forum reads RSS use it. It will at least start some threads. With luck people will respond.
Make up some names and talk to yourself. LOl sounds stupid, but hey you need content.
Controversy sells, start some shizit about something or someone. Let people know that smack is being said on your threads about them. If you can get with another site that will work this with you. You can have a knock down drag out fight between sites. (staged of course)

To keep people you have to entertain them. So put on a show.

Clean your dead members out. Nothing is more b.s. than to go to a forum that says "we have 4000 members" and you find out it has 9 who are active. Keep the ratio of members to active members close.

 

Hmmm... food for thought!
Thanks for the tips, buddy!

 

That's not really true if you know the tricks to get activity in your forums
To start you off: you should already create several topics in categories, and make sure you have enough unique categories.
Then you should advertise your forum a bit, this doesn't mean spamming!

 

Sorry, off topic... is that site for sale on sitepoint?

 

You should read this: http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/articles.php?do=morearticles
Theadminzone is the community specially created for community administrators.

www.big-boards.com : Collection of the largest msg boards on the web. 500000 posts is the mimimum requirement to list your board there.

gregdavidson, my suggestion:
1. Creative. Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Oe3MEzTsk. I am really shock when i found it.
2. Teamwork. You need more man power. Paid per post services is a good start.

Good luck

 

im currently working on starting a forum up ( http://costaluzinfo.com/forum ) which i will be starting to setup correctly and promote as of next week. So any tips on starting a comunity is apreciated

 

I actually came up with this forum at www.JoinMyWebsite.com and I'm having a hard time getting people to join that. Basically, my idea was to get a bunch of webmasters to join who need help getting people to join their websites. Those webmasters could join each other's websites so each of their websites look busier and will attract more members.

 

YOU have to be the most active person. Why do people want to come there and talk? <- a question yo ushould ask yourself. I run a fairly successful forum with over 18,000 posts, none paid for are created by spam bots. I had a couple of partners and didn't even know anything about internet marketing. The few partners I had was enough to keep the forum active and slowly build the community. The community is still rather small, but very active.

 

Find a niche especially something that revolves around enthuasists and you must have a high interest in your forums idea also.

I started www.e30owners.com 2 years ago and it is still only growing but it now has over 23,000 posts, 620 members and its aimed at one model of BMW's for Irish owners.. the odds were definetly stacked against me to begin with..

I got 3 fellow enthuasists to be mods when i started and we just started posting topics, it takes care of itself now.

Saying that i have only earned $137 to date from google so it aint gonna make me rich, but that never was the plan anyway.

 

As a good start, yes. Most of the popular board admin will stop posting when the board become extremely buzy. This is the golden rule of community maintenance.

A very good question. Example:
DP, SP, V7 - Community for webmasters. Webmaster is the person responsible for designing, developing, marketing, or maintaining a website. Webmaster want profit and therefore, those "how i made $xxx in yyy days" topics ring the bell.

http://www.gaiaonline.com/community/

- I joined them few years ago because i would like to learn why they have many active members and you know what, wau...amazing concept there.

 

I think forums are hard to start if you have a crap idea behind its purpose. General chat forums are just utterly useless and for the most part there's already thousands of forums out there that cover the specific aspects.

The only time I've had instant success with a forum is for local communities (i.e. geographical area)/politicans.

 

As Adam Hughes said here above, you have to dedicate your forum to a special niche, you can't make another "General Topic" forum. That will never work.

At the beginning you can try to add some ghost writers. If you got some time to spend you can do this for yourself. Control about 5-10 users at the same time and create topics and answer them with those users. In that way people see that the forum is active and maybe start to post something. Do this until you'll get around 5-10 original posters and they will make the jog for you.

Another thing is to have the forum open for guest so you dont have to register to see whats on the board and another important thing, allow guest to post. This will generate some free post for you. Because some people don't really want to register just to post one question on a half-active board.

And another thing, remember to be fast to answer questions or reply to new threads. This will also make the forum feel more active and more atractive to join.

 

a forum by definition is a place where people come to talk. If you have nothing to talk about, or people there who are worthy of being listened to, then why is anyone going to waist there time on a forum?

Getting them started ... is impossible. You add a forum to a site that is already getting a readership, and people are asking questions. This is kind of like asking how to start selling tires when no one owns a car. Sure, you can give incentives and have a few people walk around rolling the tires with them, you might catch a mood like "pet rocks" did back in the 70's, but more than likely, what's going to happen is ... nothing.

If you have a site of interest, then forums are the easiest thing in the world to start. Definitely a case of the dog wagging the tail trying to get a forum to support interest in a web site.

Digital Point here has an "interest" and a huge community of active internet users of all types which are interested in the subject matter, and they came up with a very simple idea "shared ad revenue" which caught the attention of the upper-marketing, internet geek and bloggers out there, calling into the site some very good minds. You can use the same formula to make a forum go, but typically the ideas I hear for forums are starting forums about real estate, some product, some investment or something like that, which is useless without a site which has already collected an interest in the ideas.

Uclue.com (the place all the Google Answers Researchers went ), just opened up a Private Question feature, so now you can ask questions and get answers without telling everyone in the world as well. Start Looking for them on YouTube soon as well.

 

My new forum is dedicated to a specific niche. And I am prepared to be the most active member.

 

Maybe putting some unique articles in your forum?