Hey guys I want to start a online business forum similar to digitalpoint which discusses the same things and allows people within my area to come to to ask questions and help each other out. I have vbulletin ready to go. But where should I start? Any good places to get content to start off? Im really keen to start just need some suggestions on what you guys think.
Do you have a site alredy to link from? If not how are people going to find you? Not many search for DP you need to set it going I would say tell us about it here and if it works out you'll get people visiting. the content comes from the users really
Starting a forum out of nothing would be very difficult. I'd start to build a website on topic and work on getting traffic on that first.
If you don't have any users or posts at all, I suggest you hire some paid to post people to kick start your forum. No one wants to join an empty forum Do this first, then market your site.
I agree with 8everything. Take some time out to build quality content. You really need to work your ass off in the initial days. Paid posters helps to kick start the forum. The first thing the users see while visiting the forum is how active the forum is! Good luck
Demon fox, I'm willing to post in your forums for a price. Just send me a PM in case you're interested.
Well, it is always advisable to start from yourself first.Then you can have some paid posters to work on your forum. Slowly trafic will build up and then there are other ways of promoting your forum by providing a link in other forums where you will be working. At present, I am working on two forum of your topic. If you need my assistance as a paid poster then please do send me a PM.
Well you start of make a few good posts then get paid posters distribute your site pay people to advertise in sigs and stuff like that and then just build up pr and traffic.
starting forum may be easy but it is difficult to get reals visitors. so focus on more and more good online advertising , publishing etc.
Try to make your niche as specific as possible and in an area where you personally have strong knowledge. Ask yourself why someone would spend time on your new forum rather than on DP? If you have a specific niche and you can provide expert knowledge on it, people will be interested in participating on your forum.
let your domain-name say what forum it is, that will also build traffic to your website. Make it short and easy to remember. Also from scratch it if difficult to build the forum, you would need to build it over a period of time - have quality content posted, start form a network of people and moderators. Also there are people could do quality paid posting. ensure you get quality content and discussions and that are relevant to the topic mentioned.
You asked where you could get good content from. To answer that simply, go to the B/S/T section here and go to either "Content" or "Content Creation". However, if you want your forum to actually be used by people, you're better off looking at popularising your forum. Yes, you need content to start off with (the way you're looking at it, anyway), so maybe you should go purchase some. Bring users in, they will make their own content, and it's more natural than anything you buy (unless you're willing to fork out quite a lot of money to keep those creators there, making it look as though they're real users) it never looks right when you go to a forum and see that 80-90% of user accounts hit e.g 250 posts, and don't come back again. I'm not sure if DP still allows buying/selling forum posting (it seems as if they're cutting down a lot on what's allowed) so I wont say to go look there for posters but there are many other places you could source this work. Having said this, unless you are extremely lucky, you need to make your forums stand out. If you just make it 100% like every other of the top Business forums, you'll never get anywhere. I once found out that threads I was making in this forum were being re-posted to another forum, I went and had a look, they had much content copied straight from DP and some other sites. Needless to say I can't even remember what that forum was called.