Article in Forum Building

Anyone new to forum building should read this article. It should help you get started with your new online community and monetizing your forums. It isn't easy creating your own forum. Starting up your own forum takes alot of time and dedication. You need to invest at least a good hundred dollars to start your forums. Firstly, you should choose what script you're going to be using. The three popular ones are vBulletin, IPB, and phpBB. Go with the script you feel comfortable using. I would recommend vBulletin, because it's a really popular vBulletin board among users, it's professional, and it's interface is good. Do your research, test out the demo versions of each forum script and decide on which one to use. You can always change later on if your users don't like it or if you want to make the switch. Make sure you register a good domain name.

There are alot of forums on the web, and it's getting more and more competitive each day. You need to create a unique forum. Make sure you're not using a free/default template that came with your forums. Have a custom one made by a professional designer. This makes your users think that you are serious about your website and makes it look better. Make sure that you also create guidelines for the forums so that the members follow rules and there is no spamming on your forums.

Be active on your forums. Make daily updates, listen to your members and add whatever features they want. If you're active on your forums, other members will be active too.

Create something unique for you forum. Start it off with a unique contest. Ex. Require members to make quality posts and refer people to earn points for the contest. Award top 3 members with the most points a gift. This will bring in more members and increase your forum activity. It may bring in unwanted spam, so make sure you use good rules and guidelines for the contest and that you moderate what users post and warn them if they begin to spam. Advertise your forums on relevant websites, and add your forums to search engines.

You may start putting up Ads once you start receiving members/visitors to your website. Don't put too many ads on the forums, just put like 2 or three Ads in good places. Try not to put any annoying ads or pop-ups. Text Ads like Google perform good. Use forum colors for your ads so that it blends in with your forums. This may increase your click through rate. Once you start receiving a good amount of traffic, you can also start selling advertising space (text link ads and banner ads) on your website.

For earning money through another method, you may start offering premium memberships also. Make sure you set the right price for premium memberships, don't make it too much. You can offer more PM Space, Points, Ad-Free forum, private forum access, and other features for premium memberships.

Maintain your forums, post daily, listen to your members, place your ads properly, and you'll have a successful forum.