Hi there, I have just started a forum a couple of weeks ago and although we have a 150 members already I am realising how hard it is to get people to your forum, i know its still early stages and alot will change in time. But my real question is how did this forum become so successful ? and not just that worth so much ?? I checked the vaule and on average its worth about 2 million dollars now thats a hell of alot of money for a forum to be worth, so it must be making great revenues etc. I am so amazed and to be honest this makes me more determined to make mine a success, but its not just about the money because i actually love what I am doing I have been a members of so many forums in the past why not have one myself But does anyone have any secrets of success ? do's and dont's where and who to advertise with etc ? Would be great to hear from anyone, including admin
I can totally relate, I purchased an existing sports forum but in the end turned it into a blog. It was thriving for a while but then I had a hard time getting an audience and battling spam, you really got to push and have some good followers to help you out, having less competitive forums helps too
the thing i like the most about dp was the posters was a little matured than my previous forums i have joined in. my time reading posts here gets worthwhile. i learned a lot.
Forums can be a pain to manage.I have managed more than 10+ forums since the last 4-5 years..Some did well , some are doing very nice right now and some died totally. These days if you have to make your forum successfull , you will have to invest a lot.After investing a lot in advertisements and all , you will get nice amount of traffic and the forum will start to move on. Higher no of posts/threads will result in more traffic through SEO. So if you are on a small budget , never try of starting a forum.
Aside from its age, DP is popular because it has so many indexed pages in search engines that when you search for anything remotely related to webmaster stuff, the first few results will most likely be a thread from DP. Aside from that, it has already gained loyalty from its users (because it provides so many opportunities & information like no other forum can). & It's a great community to interact with, so many online users at a time.
Yes I have to agree totally with the last few posts here, we have created a money making site and gaming forum and although there is a lot of competition I have already been a mod for someone else so really know how to deal with the day to day side of it. We have vowed with our site that we wont tolerate spam one bit and will work our hardest to combat it no matter how big we get, we will then use mods ourself to help us but at all times we will be a very big part and oversea everything. I think the reason most forums fail is because a lot of people see the successful ones like here and think they are going to be on to a winner straight away and when they havnt earned anything ina couple of weeks they throw in the towel. Whereas you can see thatthis forum has put in effort from day one and that is why they are where they are because they wasnt afraid to work hard for it and out in theman hours, exactly the same as me and my friend we both knew exactly what we was getting into when we started this and didnt start it on the principle of getting us rich of even giving up out jobs for it, we started it because we both love and feel passionate about what we are promoting in our forum and know alot about it from other forum and know where to improve from there mistakes.. We both hold down a full time job and then spend all our spare time/and cash on making the forum safe and trustworthy, and the cash part on advertising. I fel that this is how digital point probably made it and now the creator can sit back and be proud of all the effort he has put into this, and somewhat reap the rewards. Like us we know forums are very hard to get into and make successful but if you go into it as a hobby and something you love to do in your spare time then you are almost certain to succeed whereas if you go into thinking it will be easy money and will run itself then you are sadly wrong and will fail very very quickly. I have seen far to many forums which I joined just turn into spam dumps and now its not even worth looking at as there is nothing there and the webmaster has just given up and walked away from it. And the last poster is right this site is so successful now because this is indexed in virtualy every search you do online related to web building or search engine oprimization etc, and that is another thing you have to aim to do is get the post count up and make the site look really really busy but not with rubbish with relevant content to your site. We have started paying for forum posters who only post relevant and quality posts for our site and it helps a great deal as most people who visit now sign up as they feel its worth being there. So well done DP for being one of our great inspirations and we wish all the best not that you need it.
Hahaha... no, signature links have nothing to do with it. Give users something they can't get anywhere else. Invent new things that no one has ever thought of before. See this post.
forums really are a pain to manage and maintain. it's hard as hell to get a ton of people, and it's even more frustrating trying to keep everything going once they're there!
I think is hard to maintain the visitor on a forum. It might required years until it can fully expand to next level
this forum is just amazing when you think about it I dare you to test the waters on the other forums and you find junk, A**holes, rip off deals etc.... there is a category for everything on here It shows up on the SERP for sooo many things (thats how I stumbled) They are dettered to keep out spammers Rules Moderators People that care Smart informative infromation (content is king in a forum as well) I could go on and on. None the less I just started a sports form on my website and would love to start getting sports posters and gamblers intrigued as you have done for webmasters and everybody else on the web so please feel free to give me any hints since I helped out wth my feedback here.
I think is hard to maintain the visitor on a forum. It might required years until it can fully expand to next level