How Much Did/Will You Invest To Kickstart Your Forum?

You wait until your birthday, I'll be getting in extra shots for you just for that

Hmmm, that sounds familiar

 

The two quotes above say it best keep it close to home, do your thing and it will gorw itself. So far in my experience, I liken it to submitting your site to Google. Your traffic will not explode right away (unless you're lucky). It take time and then before you know it...POW! I think paying indviduals to post and strategic use of Adwords/Adbrite is the best bet. But don't forget the free tools, directories etc....and lots of patience

Good luck!

 

Sub $500 initially, but alot more over the lifespan of the project. Like to see some ROI before spending more.

 

So are you guys hoping for Ad Space revenue (AdSense, Affiliate banners etc.) or are you using it to inflate traffic / grow a community or any other reasons?

 

I have done best with selling direct ads. Motivations include revenue, building a community, and user generated content

 

from what i know, forums are not super big money-makers...atleast from what i've read. i think if you concentrate on the community, everything else will follow...

 

I asked this because I'm coding a wicked forum kick-start MOD for phpBB and VB. I need some testers: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=222267

Let me know if you're interested. Both version should be ready for release just after the weekend.

 

that's right buddy... and communities make money

 

Starting a forum is really a hard way to start with, I tried paid posters on three forums, and all three are yet be active, spent more then 200$ on each forum, probably it needs more $$ and more time from me.
Just remember to give most of your time to this new baby.
When do you plan to start?

 

I found mines on rentacoder. It depends on your niche. If your forum is programming related then you can find lots of expert there!!

I am working with them on other forums to do signature advertising (correct term? ) but will work with them on my own forum once it is ready to launch.

Good luck.

 

By the way, did you notice the same thing? : Time to time i dont get replies from a subscribed thread. (For example i missed the reply above and found it while reading another message.)

I guess this is a bug (may be thought as a feature) in vbulletin. If the answers are too near in time space, then the system does not send the reminding email! What do you think?

 

atleast $2000 and 10 useful friends , without that don't start a forum

 

All i had to do was buy the domain & shared hosting. so about 20$ AUD. Still using SMF for forum software & rave about it. About to upgrade to a dedicated server (PM me if you have any reccommendations please for hosts)

 

So the forum kicked off without any marketing?

 

Correct, it is a runescape trading forum, were people can buy/sell accounts, ingame gold, memberships etc. At the time the only website were people were able to do that closed down, so that night i created it and its been booming ever since. We now have 7.2K+ members, never payed for advertiseing on any of my sites.

 

oh ok cool. yeah, having no competion always helps

 

yeh it was great, now imitation sites everywhere ah well thats life

 

just strive to be better then them

 

Try EV1 Servers. I have a server there (~130$) for 2+ months and i did not have any problems with them so far. As far as i see, the service is excellent.

 

Incase anyone is curious, I have spent about $300 on mine - but I definately think that if I had 10 typing friends, that it could be much better