Forums V.S. Blogs which is better for traffic generation?

In many cases a forum will pull in more traffic itself as there are MANY people contributing to it's content, where as most blogs have only one contributor.

Though, really it can depend on many things. Matt Cutts blog pulls in more people then most forums out there (not listed on bigboards).

 

I havent had much experiance with blogs but in my opinion its forums.

 

Blogs FTW!

 

I've got a great marketing forum and it has already reached 103,000 Alexa rating in a short time. Unfortunately, my Adsense clickthrough is not as profitable as my blogs are, but the traffic is great and lots of repeat visits so low bounce rate.

 

Assuming that the same ammount of effort is put into promoting each I think that forums will definitley get more traffic than blogs. Content is added more frequently on forums because of the basic structure.

For promoting a product I would use a blog because the message cannot be effected by viewers. Forums are a community that can be focused around supporting a certain product.

For traffic I would have to say forums.

 

If you open a forum, expect at least a year before you get any real traffic.

If you open a blog under a real domain name, instead of being hosted at wordpress or blogger you will get traffic pretty fast - depending on the nitch.

I have 2 forums and 2 wordpress blogs. In comparison, the blogs get traffic faster. But, if you get tired of posting in the forums, they will take care of themselves. Sooner or later you will get tired of updating that blog daily or weekly. Then what are you going to do?

There are days when I do not post a single thing in my forum, and it still gets over 1,000 post a day. Will your blog get that kind of post? Maybe, maybe not.

The best solution is a real webpage with a forum on the backend.

 

Is it? Wouldn't the best solution be a website with an active forum and a product oriented blog.

The truth is that it all depends on the intention. My intention is to sell products. I am not online to have fun, its my job.

I am a big fan of real webpages. I get the best ranking with these as I know a little about onpage optimization and offpage link building.

Blogs are a great way to build a readership, but not many will return unless they come back to buy the product.

Forums "can"be the best source of traffic. The people engaging in the forum are not interested in selling my products "although I am working on that" but will add alot of content and bring more traffic than a blog could. If the forum is controlled enough to be based on a particular niche and webpage then thats pure gold.

 

Even better advice, as it's the best of BOTH worlds. The quick and easy blog for the short term traffic and the forum for the longer term traffic.

The landing page and other main pages of the site would be the key though, as the blog and forum should both push that aspect of the site.
Q

 

Forums are not good for selling a "certain" product, they are good for building a community.

You may be so focused on sales that you might be missing the bigger picture. Forums are for communities, for people to discuss certain topics. If your forum is only going to be focused on a few topics that relate to a product you want to sell, I do not see that type of forum growing very much.

Example: I want to use myself as an example - I have a forum, in fact I have 2 of them. One forum gets over 1.5 million page views a month, over 30,000 uniques a month, has over 1,900 members visiting every 30 days and 500 - 700 members visiting every 24 hours.

I put in product feeds from amazon and ebay to cater to my forum audience. The sales are ok, but paid memberships to my site are better.

There is more then one way to make money from a forum, sales is just a small portion.

Blogs are focused revenue, you have to have banners or sale something to make money. Forums offer a wider range of opportunities to make a cash flow then blogs could ever hope for. You just have to know "how" to take advantage of the traffic that is there.

 

Forums. Better targeted reader. The reader has probably clicked on three links to get to that article. A blog? Maybe the first post or via a search.

 

I prefer blogs. They are much easier to run and generate money from.

 

I think forums are good for CPM ads and blogs are good for CPC ads. So a person like me who does not have google adsense would prob. go with a forum.

 

It has come to my attention that forums are great as they can be used together with a blog. What I mean is that if you are a active person on forums then you need to make sure that you stay active and add value that can ultimalty lead people to your blog and what ever offers that you have for those that you can build trust with. To Be Continued...

 

It really depends on the subject and the audience, for some blogs are better for others forums are better

 

forum is good than blogs because you can get the maximum views through forum.

 

i think its forum posting. reason is, if you post anything on forum with high PR, there is a possibility of getting that thread indexed by Google unlike in Blogs.

 

Forums over Blogs, however its all about what type of traffic you are after.

 

Those of you with a lot of experience with blog and forum, how do you get traffic. search engine is one way but it is a lenghty process. do you use PPC or Email marketing to generate traffic ? What is the quickest [not necessarily easiest] way to get traffic in your blog or in your forum

 

I would say blogs. They are easier to make, and get traffic for. Just write unique quality content and you should see some traffic coming in from search engines in no time

 

This is correct in my opinion.