Making A Huge Forum Like DP & NamePros? How To Start? What To Do?

Hello Everyone,

I just started my own forum. I'm trying to make it as big as DP & NamePros. I'd like advice on how to make this forum a big one. I don;t have any users yet & very little content. Since it's based on Domains, I'd like to list available domains for sale, domain appraisals & more.

The link to the forum is here:

http://forums.expron.com

Any advice on how to get more visitors, people to write posts & interact with the forum is really appreciated. I heard the guy from "fill my forum" is a scam. I'm hoping with free giveaways, prizes & original content, more & more users will signup & use my forum. Are there any cookie cutters in building a quality forum that you know of?

P.S. I'm offering Delete (.) Net for Sale - looking for $x,xxx Range.

Thanks!

 

everyone wants help with that.

As for the domain part look for scripts that do it for you

 

You need hope and a dream. Forums are tough to get going and even harder to build up. Just when you think you have it rolling, people quit showing up. First you need to hire some good posters who can fill the forum up a bit. You need to spend money on quality advertisers on any related format you can find. It takes a lot of money and a lot of time to build a successful forum. Most fail because the owner gives up, if you stay with it and work hard you can create something great.

Advice on hire forum posters. I have been on both sides as a poster and as one hiring posters. Make sure you ask for a sample post. Make sure your requirements are laid out clearly. If you hire from here, go back and look at the posts they made here before you hire them. If all their posts are one line nonsense here, you are most likely going to get the same quality when you hire them.

Do not offer prizes or any contest until you start to have some traffic and you have some good content on the forum. Otherwise, you are wasting money.

Good luck and stick with it!

 

Do you know much about online communities yet? You need to read up, and learn. Have you read this article: "a few steps to starting an online community"? If you haven't, then you should.

 

I would say that your odds of success are pretty remote. I hate to be negative, but from the description you gave of your planned community, why would anyone want to go there? If you can answer that question, then you may have hope. You need a niche, or something to cause people to want to go to your brand new forum, over the many, many established domain name forums... dnforum for example. 99.999% of forum goers are going to pick the busy forum over the new forum... reason being that they can get an answer there in 5 minutes, vs. 5 days on a new forum.

Assuming you aren't discouraged by what I said, then you will need a few, or a half dozen, people to help you get it going. You'll need to go on four or five times a day each and hit every thread that's going to input, and then each start a thread or two every day. You'll also need to relentlessly promote the forum. One of the best ways is to post on many other forums that allow urls in your sig. So this means you'll be spending a lot of hours every day posting on a lot of forums. When you post on the other forums you'll have to be VERY careful to not look like you are promoting your own forum. You want to be passive about it and have people seek it out from the quality of your posts, and then seeing the sig. If you start to look remotely like you are promoting your forum, then the other members (and possibly the forum owner) will pounce on you pretty quickly and your reputation on that forum will be greatly tarnished. If you can manage to do that for a year and get very lucky, you might get to the point of the forum sustaining the dialog without you pushing it. And you still won't be anywhere near the size of the big guys... but hopefully you can relax a little bit and let the "community" start to take the reins and you manage the activity more.

One way to set your forum apart is to focus on articles and content. If you can get some really good articles and how-tos, then you will draw people there and they may stick around. That is how my forum got started five years ago, was by writing FAQs that drew people to the site. I was fortunate in that a moderator on another forum asked for volunteers to setup an FAQ for a product, and they didn't want to host it for some reason. So I was able to freely post links to my FAQ questions in the other established forum.

Sorry for being blunt, but I think that a lot of people have the perception that its relatively easy to get a forum going. It isn't. Especially if you want a high quality forum with real meat in the posts... not just a bunch of "hi, what's up" kinds of posts. If you are up for the challenge and have the time, it can be very rewarding to watch the thing grow over time.

 

Both the forums that want to be like took a lot time to be what they are today. They didn't just install vbulletin and say come to us. It took hard work. If you want to be be like them then copy there way of working hard.

 

stop and really think about this. Is themarket saturated and taken over by the big boys? If it is then it's 100X harder than than a nice niche forums. Jst a thought.

 

you will have to invest lots of money by hiring other member's signature links if you don't want to post on other forums all by your self.

Though, you can always find time to post, with no rush on other forums, build your reputation, make a niche and hire signature links and avatars.

Though again, lots of money on advertisement...

 

you may want to check forum management forum here at DP for more good info

 

Not even. You can easily make a big forum with dedicated members. Find a few friends that'll help you start up your new community - launch an adwords campaign, and have a few big contests. Have bloggers talk about you, etc.

 

take the weaknesses of digitalpoint,namepros and all the other big forums and make them your strengths.
As for what the weaknesses are, I'll let you figure that out

 

Thanks for all the suggestions & advice. So far so good! The forum is coming along great!

 

just remember even though you will put tons of money and work in your forum - it is not going to happen within the next 2-3 years .. forums take time

 

I think allout nailed this. All great successes start with a dream or vision.

"I wanna have a large forum" might not be so strong starting point. I mean, digital point and other big forums were lead because of genuine interest in these subjects, and wants to create something like they currently are.

If you can figure out WHY you want a huge forum, then you'll be going in the right way much faster.

 

Forums take time and people to get involved in...

 

You also need to consider the cost of running the place even if you managed to get it half the size of NP and DP.

 

lots of time, patience and hard work.

 

I started a forum about 2 months back as I am a moderator on a number of large forums and I thought it was time I tried it myself.

I had been planning to start one for about 6 months but could not decide on what I wanted the forum to be about and all the things I did find were already heavily saturated. I finally found my niche based on what it was that I wanted to learn about or provide value for... not what I thought would make me money or what everyone else was doing.

So I started the forum http://www.aussietycoon.com, the forum is focussed on promoting and discussing entrepreneurship within Australia, it has really started to get some traction with a reasonable amount of original posts per day, great original content and a small team of people that are keen to see it a success. The forum already has 40 members, and is getting around 200-300 uniques per day!

I don't think this is solely down to my niche however, I heavily pushed the site to my target market, listened to what members wanted and made changes that I believe added value to the community.

The goal to a successful forum I believe is to never stop promoting and adding content, the forum must be active! and you must provide original valuable content, there is nothing worse than looking at a forum, seeing three posts by the same member and they actually don't say a thing!

Good luck with your forum.. just a suggestion tho, you have WAAAAY too many categories and they aren't organised at all.. I actually felt dizzy looking at it. I suggest you break your categories into no more than 4-6 until you start to require more... then split your data up.

Also, get a custom template.. the vanilla template just doesn't cut it.

 

Hello !

Personally I believe that most probable you might have an average forum but never something like NamePros or DigitalPoint

Why do I say so ?

NamePros and DigitalPoint were from the first forums on their niches thats why the first ones are always better. Why should I join your webmaster forum or domain name forum when all the domainers are at NamePros ?

Actually you must offer something unique , something other's haven't even thought of and thats the only way you can have a forum like NP or DP but again , it will be too difficult

Thanks for your time and good luck

Olgi

 

again bring the value to your members - that is the only way to build DP like forum