Earnings from forums?

Hi there. How much is possible to earn from forums? How big should it be? I have $100 and how could I spend them to start off the forum and start earn from forums like $1/1day, etc ... ? Thanks fo advices

 

Forums are very hard to start, take months of talking to yourself, and months of promoting and even then most fail. $100 isn't even enough to get vbulletin, you could use a free board, but it's more about time then money. How much time are you willing to invest?

 

yeah just like snra786 said, forums take a very long time to develop. so start right now, get members, get threads up, be very active. as your forum grows youll be able to earn from adsense and selling advertisements

 

I assume you've probably got some experience posting around on forums, I wonder if you post at any particularly sociable ones? Do you have a group of people on some die-hard forum anywhere? Do this as a group at first, as forums are groupware, and then you can later rearrange the actual focus of the forum.

Start general, populate it (by buying visitors, bringing friends from other sites who share the same broad interest of the forum, talk to self). Over time analyze what your friends are liking and focus on those. Bin the stuff that no one cares about.

A forum can really really really help you in so many ways if you can get it off the ground and with visitors who return and return again, but you need to make sure the discussions are relevant, and try to attract as many trolls as you do regular members lol, and lay down the law, and make it some status symbol to be promoted to a moderator. (then your mods work free, they beg to lol)

Lot's of things to do, you just need to do it and once it is fleshing out, promote the hell out of it. on youtube and all of those jazzes. Especially NEWish places where communities already exist - because they are full of people who are up for, yep, joining in with new communities

Don't try to make a general forum either, make a general forum on a specific topic - one that you will love to talk about and read about, you will be doing it A Lot. Have a general/off topic lounge type section, but be targeted at some group of consumers, monetary or not, just consumers and talkers.

 

I myself have created large forums in various niches. Here are a few tips to creating a forum that is a cash cow and runs itself. Also just for your info I even sold a proboards free message board for over 5k awhile back.

1. Keep forum active at all times (even if you have to post 30 times a day with numerous names)
2. Ask people at relative forums to sign up for yours and ask friends (remember over 80 percent of forum sign-ups come from word of mouth)
3. user friendly (so many forums try to get too fancy (make easy posting, allow signatures, dont clutter or create slower load times)

I might write a short e-book on this soon as it seems a lot of people need advice on this, forums can be a great thing and there are so many niches.

 

I talked to myself in the forum all the time. And my forum still failed. Too mnay people came and looked and they not bother to sign up. A few sign up never speak any word.

 

I would say that you should spend around $50 on paid posting, and the rest on links. If you do free things such as article marketing and YouTube videos, then this'll open more doors for you. I would advise that you spend $10 on paid posting per week for 5 weeks, paying 5 people to do 20 posts per week (pay them $0.10 per post). So you'll spend $2 per person, so $10 per week, and $50 in total. This means that you'll get getting new posts for 5 weeks, and by then you should be bringing in some decent traffic.

 

To be honest paid posting is a waste of time. So many people get on and do their 50-100 posts and then leave. Unless you can get it very cheap don't do it. They will just post and then leave and never come back. Another big thing many people overlook is the structuring of your categories. Do not make too many categories in your forum, make sure you make only a few categories and make them very general.

 

Finding a niche for the forum subject is the hardest part as most have been covered. Find a good niche, start off with a free board (SMF/phpBB etc..) work hard at making it work, and then it will make you money.
I love starting forums, it gives you such a good feeling when people sign up and start posting.
Good luck with this, and don't take too much notice of those who tell you its really hard, and it could fail etc...
Work hard, and if you want to succeed, you will.

 

Get a free forum software and launch it. Then work your ass off for it.

 

hi there. Thanks for answers. I will definitely start off my new forums soon, work hardly, add tutorials, articles, post to myself on particular niches. But none said if forums can bring money for living ...

 

Mainly it depends on which niche you are going into. Niche such as webmasters topic are too saturated nowadays and if you can't establish and get enough members, the target is almost impossible to reach.

 

Start off with something like the phpBB platform its free and you can see if you like it before you spend alot of money on the VB forum.

I forgot to say they can be fun but are time consuming and some times you think is it worth it.

 

Actually do not start off with phpbb and convert it to VB. I have had to do that in the past and it is a major pain with many problems which cause you to lose members here and there in the process of trying to convert their data over. And as you may know its hard to get people to sign back up to a message board when there are 10000 other good ones having no problems.

 

As others here say, it depends on what the focus of the forum is. Many areas already have an overabundance of fora - from webmaster advice to knitting. The first thing is to come up with a discussion site that will gain sufficient interest from people in an area which is currently underserviced by the web.

 

Hence why I said buy about 100 posts per week, this way you'll get a constant flow of posts for 5 weeks, and if you haven't marketed/started getting users in by then, then you're probably too late.

I soo agree with this. If you put 50 forums, then they aren't going to all get posted in, even if you pay people, so you're going to end up with an empty forum with a few sections being used. Keep it small, keep it simple. Only make more categories when you have more members, and only do it then if they request it!

 

I suggest you use this money for SEO and backlinks. Or if possible appoint forum posters on a flat rate basis. Be most active on your forum. It will take some months before you get any success but if you fight(not literally) till then it will be very fruitful.

 

I still think the days of throwing up a copy of phpBB or vBulletin and expecting it to take off are over. That was the early 2000s.

I think now, unless you have a very large network of friends and fans from another forum, it's next to impossible to start up a site that's 100% forum based and make it successful.

On the other hand, I think a forum that compliments an existing site or blog that is already popular is a different story. For example, I frequently visited a certain movie review site where the owner does his own reviews.. mostly related to picture and audio quality of high-def releases.

After his site was VERY popular, he removed the ability to comment on reviews and instead directs users who with to comment into his forums where there was a thread already created for each post. Now, his forums grew exponentially within months to 1000's of users and tons of discussion.

 

1. Start a forum in a niche area you are REALLY interested in. (How to tell? You spend quite a lot of time reading up on the subject or spent a lot of money on that hobby.)

2. Spend some of your $$ on a good domain name and reliable hosting. Starting with free forum software is ok. You can always upgrade when things outgrow you first software.

3. Start with NO ADVERTISEMENT (ok ok, very very few ads). Spend the first few months getting more members and good content. Skeletal forum boards with lots of ads turn people off.

4. Do good housekeeping and keep spammers off.

5. Be prepared for a few disappointing months, maybe years.

6. When you have a reasonably good members base, increase the number of Adsense locations.

7. Upgrade to a good paid forum software to help you better manage posts and users.

Hope this helps.

 

Hmmm if u want to promote a forum it is just waste of time hardly people come to your forum you have to give up with it, prefer anything else.