I'm getting a bit sick of everyone starting forums on topics that make for terrible forums. The concept behind a forum is a community. One where people will return visit, reply to their posts, and create topics that others will find interesting. Some topics make for terrible communities thus have no business being a forum. I just visited one such forum a few minutes ago. I won't name names but it was in the careers category. Basically a forum where any and every job had a category and supposedly how to enter that career was the forum concept. This won't work. For one no one is going to be expert enough to cross post in many categories. For another he didn't have any general topic forums. I can't imagine people would join and participate regularly on such a forum. I know not everyone views success as mass appeal, millions of posts, or high revenue. So if you're one of those people then my post is not for you. Go ahead and make your mini-niche forum that no one cares about and no one will return. If you define success as income then listen up. 1. Find a niche that's going attract daily discussions. An example would be Anime. Fans of anime can talk everyday about them. 2. Make sure you have a few general topics outside of your niche like off-topic, movies, or humor. Something that people can participate and post all the time with ease. If people have to strain to think of something to post you have a real problem. 3. Don't start with ads for a new site. What for? You don't have any visitors anyways. You won't earn more than a few dollars per month and you run the risk of pushing away possible members. 4. Only start sites you consider yourself knowledgable in and can talk about every day. If you're into cars then make a car forum. If you're into bowling then make a bowling forum. 5. Research your competitors and forums already in that niche. Now that doesn't mean you copy them. It means you see if an audience exists and if you can do better than what already exists. Research competition can also help you set goals. If someone can get 10,000 members for a bowling forum than you can do it too. That's just a quickie post for me. I could go on for hours but I have to attend to my own forums now. Peace.
Nice post, something for a lot of people to consider. I'm thinking of starting a forum sometime in the future, so thanks for the great starting point!
On extra thing about researching "competitor's" forums. Successful forums have nothing to do with the style/skin they use or the categories/descriptions. It's unbelievable how many forums out there simply rip-off our category structure... even being too lazy to write their own category descriptions. End users can see through this and our popularity has nothing to do with how our category descriptions are set. If you are too lazy to even write your own one-sentence category description, you shouldn't even bother trying to setup a forum. Let's take our Google Forum as an example... the description originated here. I know that because I'm the one that wrote it. Now check this out... lolol http://www.google.com/search?q="THE...pany,+not+for+discussion+of+individual+sites" 11,400 pages using that description. What's even funnier about some of these sites copying our categories is they blindly copy them all... including forums we use to support our own products. lol for example... this forum has support forums for our Keyword Tracker tool and Co-op Advertising Network (again, using our descriptions): http://www.earningdesk.com/ There's even a poor attempt to mimic our template/coloring]... again... if the best you can come up with simply is to use someone else's, you don't have what it takes to run a forum.
Having a forum about anime in general won't get you anywhere fast as the web is flooded with anime forums and communities. You'll have to go deeper in the niche of anime to be unique. I'm sure that's the same for other topics.
HF is ripped off at least once a week. Not one clone has done well either plus I've had lots shut down by a simple DMCA to their host. Such a stupid thing to do to start a forum. WOW...that's just unbelievable.
You have to keep in mind that most "internet marketers" and "SEO experts" are morons. Using words like "concept" will only confuse them.
My personal "Don't" tips to create a forum: Don't buy a domain name until you're absolutely sure Don't start a forum if you're completely alone and have no idea how to start Don't spam other forums with mass advertising about your forum (it won't work) Don't create more than 5 forum categories if you don't have more than 5 topics Don't abandon your forum and hope it will blossom on it's own Don't force people to register against their own will just to get files you're offering Don't add automatic RSS feeds to create lots of ghost posts on your forum Don't use spam tools to promote your forum Don't include ads if your forum has less than 30 steady visitors Don't think that a good domain name is equal to automatic popularity Everyone will break some of these "don't" principles including myself. But remember that the first genuine forums members that you are lucky to host in your community will be the same people that will influence many others to follow, so take good care of them. After the first year that my forum existed, I offered t-shirts to the 20 most active members from all around the world. That was four years ago and my forum now accounts with nearly a million page views per month and a very strong community. My forums are not as big as many other folks here but the lesson is that you should really put your heart into creating something fresh and valuable to you and your visitors. Just keep working and think on a good direction for the forum at something that you really like instead of starting a forum based on something that seems "cool" and likely to success that you won't likely keep on promoting after a few weeks. Good luck.
Most folks read forums, they will only post if they request an answer not found in any of the post. If the forum does not look active why expect someone to ask a question. No person will join an empty forum to help you, period.