How to build a successful forum

[humbleworld]

In order to build a truly unique community, your forum site must focus a niche. Don't try to be anything for everything.

Just target a particular group or field of interest.

[dxyy]

Nice points, now...how come authors signature reads "earn money for posting" lol.

I think he has a revenue sharing forum. So if you use Google Adsense, you can input your code for a share of the ads that result due to your posts and threads - or something to that effect.

[ets]

I have just opened my forum. Right now I'm the only user. It's connected to my website which generates an average of 100 hits a day. Not much I suppose, but it's coming along. The majority of my referrals are from google now. Should I post daily in my forum as a topic expert to get things moving along? I'm looking for ideas to get it started.
hxxp:www.effectiveteachingsolutions.com/teachertalk [nonactive]

[christicehurst]

I have just opened my forum. Right now I'm the only user. It's connected to my website which generates an average of 100 hits a day. Not much I suppose, but it's coming along. The majority of my referrals are from google now. Should I post daily in my forum as a topic expert to get things moving along? I'm looking for ideas to get it started.
http://www.effectiveteachingsolutions.com/teachertalk

Just start posting good content and topics that get people interested. Also you have far far too many boards to start off with. Gotta cut them down.

[Sun11]

Good Mod

[Noddegamra]

I use the AdRevenue Sharing mod. It allows my members to earn a little cash just for being around and posting. I make enough money on the blog side of things to not need to worry about the forum (although i still have a share on the forum). At one point I was making a few dollars a day, but it has gone a little quiet recently.

One of the things I find hardest to do is advertise my forum as it's fairly general. Most of my time, effort, work goes into the main site. I have little time to concentrate elsewhere. 

[lebisol]

Hey Noddegamra ,
Nothing wrong with your model...I thought you used it as an example joke or perhaps was an 'old' signature with the whole $ part of it.
Your points are still great when building a community and some are learnt the hard way...definetly a good read.
Thanks!

[Jonah2008]

Building a forum depends on the platform your operating on for your brand. This doesn't come with ease as we have already been a victim of. This is due to the a misunderstanding in your public domain. The truth for success is simple. Operate as friends offline as Friends and then build a network as the personality in faults, trolls and vocabulary and name changing eventually leaks out in our social lives. Like the car thief who became a salesmen in a high end car security office we were once lead down this path where we has a group in our forum became the trolls through the trolls reverse sociology of members and genuine traffic saw us in the light of aggressive backstabbing teachers.

On that reverse and deleting their lies we became the forum of truth a platform they simply can't climb above even with the information they have become historians of modern day forums with to much to say and no real answers. Simply Machines have a great download speed on our platform so please consider talking with us as members on the phone. You'll feel a little no doubt when reading this email. Keep your defences up but remain social to your business associates. Drink anyone?

[Noddegamra]

Hey Noddegamra ,
Nothing wrong with your model...I thought you used it as an example joke or perhaps was an 'old' signature with the whole $ part of it.
Your points are still great when building a community and some are learnt the hard way...definetly a good read.
Thanks!

i do need to work on a new banner, something to wet peoples appetite, getting them to visit and join!

[up-club]

indeed a very interesting and useful topic

Difficult understand how certain foruns are so popular and others are not sometimes .....maybe timing, maybe luck in getting active members, I don`t know .....but I really would love to understand that

My forum name is up-club, so I have a section named UP Levels with private foruns members can only see when they reach these levels by their number of posts. It`s a kind of game that gives more and more privacy as a reward to the more active members.

[bsm]

SO many good suggestions here! I've used a number of them myself!

If anyone has any SEO questions I'd be happy to help (I've finished reading three books on the subject, and am in the process of applying the techniques to our forum).

Just feeling like I should give a little back.

Cheers!

[mogoking55]

How do i make a forum what do i need to do

[~Kikoish~]

How do i make a forum what do i need to do

You can try to sign up for a free forum.

[perplexed]

I have just opened my forum. Right now I'm the only user. It's connected to my website which generates an average of 100 hits a day. Not much I suppose, but it's coming along. The majority of my referrals are from google now. Should I post daily in my forum as a topic expert to get things moving along? I'm looking for ideas to get it started.
http://www.effectiveteachingsolutions.com/teachertalk

Just start posting good content and topics that get people interested. Also you have far far too many boards to start off with. Gotta cut them down.

hey christicehurstI just clicked on your signature link and your forum is vbulletin not SMF now?  How come?

[rjb235]

The forums are so saturated these days , no one wants to join a small growing forum cause the other established forums have been around for many years.  So you have to work harder than 90% of everyone else if you want a good forum now.

[Texas_tea]

I have yet to find a non-successful forum that does not use paid posters. Many people think like I use to back in the day before I even knew about paid posters and the such and assume they are just regulars to the forum. What the admin does is simply adjust thier sign up date to make it appear that they have been around for years and then adjust the number of posts.

I really do think that most sucessful forums use paid posters, at least for the first year or so.

[metallica48423]

In my experience, I disagree... but to each his own, huh?

The practice is generally looked down upon by webmasters (and truthfully most of them CAN tell the difference... )  But generally speaking, most people could not diffrentiate the difference.

[perplexed]

I agree with Metallica, I would never pay people to post on my forums and it's never been necessary either.  We are not huge like Ben S's Liverpool forum (I wish) but we are not small either.   I don't think it's the answer to growing your forum, you may as well have some extra accounts and talk to yourself for free!

I do think that your forum needs to be either something unique (which is hard with so many) or something popular, if you want to attract traffic.  It needs to be open and well indexed, and you need to promote it as much as possible in every way you can, and encourage your members to do the same.

Maybe with so many forums out there to choose from, it's inevitable that some just won't make it, no matter what you do, but you have to keep plugging away for quite a while before you give up.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

We have a pretty large and to our standards really succesful general/ humourforum (846363 Posts in 22672 Topics by 2574 Members) and absolutely NO paid posts, NO paid ads, NO bots, NO spamming by staff... In the beginning people did have some alters, and stirred up conversation with themselves, but that ended pretty soon, as people started to find us.
Today, we are linked to from many relevant sites in Finland, and it's really easy to find us through Google, and at the most we have had almost 10 000 members...

I would think paying for posts and/or members as a sort of cheat, that really only hurts yourself and people usually can tell if someone is voluntarily with you or not...

[Texas_tea]

ok, if a person has no one coming to thier forum, and whenever the rare chance that  they do, nobody registers because they see nothing being posted so they leave....how do you propose to end this cycle?

I am glad to hear that you have made it with so many members without using paid posters, but I think that paying for someone to post is not much different then holding a contest stating that if you register you qualify to enter a drawing to win this or the person with the most post wins that.

I really do not think there is anything wrong with it. I think of it as paying a entertainer to come into my city and perform a concert...works the same way...to attract people.

People come to a forum for information and other benefits and paid posters normally can provide a forum with attractive posts which is helpful for a person who is just starting out.

Makes no sense to advertise a forum with no posts or threads. Only thing a person will do is visit then leave without registering to never return.  A endless cycle.

By the way, i speak from advice from 2 forums...

one has Threads: 27,863, Posts: 248,971, Members: 36,157 and always has at least 200+ users or guest

the other one Members: 16,073
Threads: 66,033
Posts: 574,119
and at the time I am posting this, they have close to 1000 guest and users on site.

of course, now they do not use paid posting cuase they do not need them but they did at one time and thier forum exploded.

The paid posters know what to do to bring traffic to your website. They are trained in this.