Starting a forum

I want to get a bit off track today and go into how to start your forum. It’s one of those tricky things that you have to do, if you decide to become a forum owner. You can take it into a step by step process however which should make it easier for the new forum owner. Remember that just because you create the forum, it does not mean that you will have instant posts.

1. Decide upon your forum software. This is one of the hardest steps in starting your new forum. But, it has to be done. You need to decide which software you want to use. It all comes down to a few major sections, first whats your budget. If you have no budget, meaning that you cannot afford to spend anything then you will be looking at a free alternative (Examples include SMF, MyBB, Novaboard and more). If you have a larger budget, ($150 or more), then you can look at more professional options, including Invision Power Board and vBulletin. Its all a matter of preference. I have to mention that some people actually, choose the free ones, because they feel they are better quality. It’s all what you think. Remember to test out your software before going live with it.

Now that you have chosen your forum software and have installed it on your website. We now need to look at getting the forum up and running.

2. The design – Do you want to keep your visitors around with a nice design? Try out different looks on your site to see which you like the best, make sure you install smiley packs and more. Just to create a friendly environment for users. Put out a selection of Avatar’s that your users will love. Then your ready to start building up users.

3. Your User Base – To make a good, successful forum you want to have a prominent large forum, with a amount of returning posters. You want people who are dedicated and come back every day. But, the problem is it will be hard to get these people to come to your forum if its empty. The resolve to this is easy, get posts on your forum before you market it. You may be thinking, how am I going to get these posts? The trick is to hire “freelance” forum posters. Their are many “companies” out there that are going to offer you forum posting, but its not going to come cheap. If you look around you can find CHEAP forum posting, which should be good quality and use that to build up your forum. As soon as you have filled your forums with some content. You are ready for the next step.

4. Gaining Unique Visitors – Everyone wants there to be guests and members on there forums, but they need to have some way to get people there. One of the ways many forums use is keyword targeting with good. One way to do this is through link building through signature links, or yahoo answers (See “Yahoo Answers” article). There are other approaches, which can include getting your message out there through banner ads. Search around, your advertising media depends on the type of forum you want to run.

Now that we have built up our member base, we have posters who repeatedly come back and are running a smooth forum. We now need to think how we can use this to help us make money off this work and money we have put in.

In my next article I will explain different ways of turning your new forum into cash.