I was just wondering...right now, the forum marketplace is so competitive, how do free forums get popular? I mean, it's always good practice to put your forum on your own domain - however: http://skysportsforum.proboards47.com/ (339,000 posts) http://templates.proboards1.com/ (49,000 posts) http://studiozero.proboards44.com/ (50,000 posts) http://s14.invisionfree.com/Naruto_FlamingZero/ (106,000 posts) http://s7.invisionfree.com/MiD/ (151,000 posts) I can find more examples, but I think that this is enough. How in the world do *any* of these boards get popular? I can't think of a single reason.
Perhaps at the moment they have good quality posters, but certainly a few years ago they didn't. This is what doesn't make sense: when someone comes onto DP and asks: "what can I do to make my forum more popular" and they're on a free bb host, people are like: "get a domain". However, plenty of forums don't have domains and are popular. How does that happen? Also, how do those admins find the comitment if they don't make money from their forums? How does SEO work very well? In fact, I don't remember ever finding a free forum via search engines, so...I'm really not sure what to think.
Offer freebies and find a way to tell the whole world about it such as through social media or Ezines. I do came across free hosted forums before on Google but they are like 10-20 pages deep inside. Most admins of such forums opened it because of their love of the hobby I guess so money isn't the question for their commitment.
i agree with you lappy. I have a free forum which i just started. I am trying my best to get traffic and members but i get a lot from people that i should get a domain but that's not going to solve the problem.
They all built up over a period of time a number of quailty commited posters. Once you get the base of your site going, it just takes time.
I can understand how some people can maintain their commitment to a free message board. Back before I started making money online, I was committed to a few message boards as a moderator. I actually wanted to run my own message board without really even thinking about profit. Fortunately, I smartened up.
I have seen many blackhat ways for forum, one time, I was downloading a movie, then it was password encrypted, and to get the password, I have to register at a forum and make 1 post and then I would be able to get access to the password sub-forum.You can try this way too.
maybe you can read on this link about how to make your forum populer.... http://www.global-review.info/articles.php?art_id=70&start=1 Code (markup): i found few trips n trick there...
Most internet users don't care what the domain name says, they're looking for content or a community catered to their interests. Having a TLD domain name is better, sure, but as I said most 'regular' internet users could care less what's in their browser.
Lots of posts all of the time and the forums are always active. You wouldn't join a forum thats last post was a year ago would you?
you should have great free features. for ex. I just added a thread called SHARING IMAGES to my forum and it is attracting members. Basically you can share your pictures from (paying) hosting companies and earn money!!!
You have to get conversations going that talk about the things people want to talk about. This can be hard to do - but it is easier if you have people helping you.
I think it is a combination of the subject matter, "buzz", and author recognition - in addition to, as other posts have said, keeping it fresh. Jim
I think they have lots of posts that have different website links in it that is why traffic goes into those forums looking for their niche... Thinking that these are big forum sites and they may find the answers to what they are searching for.
When i 1st got online i joined many forums not knowing the difference between a free and paid one. Didnt make any difference to me. But as i think about it the free ones where kind of better to me. They wherent so hard up on keyword, niche thing. I did have specific reasons to join the forum, specific area of intrest but wasnt hounded at all for going off topic and stuff. I have joined niche forums and if you strayed off topic you get warned then banned and stuff. no fun!! free ones i was in also had topics where you could discuss other forums and websites, you try that in a paid forum and see what happens. Seems free forums the owners have a real passion about the forum and dont care about ranking and all that.