How much forum members worth?

Hi,

How much do you thing forum members worth.

I am about to buy a forum with the same topic as one of mine's and I would like to know how to estimate the price of the forum.

Do you think registered members adds a lot of value to the forum?

If you are running a forum? How much would you pay for a member? Member who makes posts?

 

I would spend some time on a forum and see how many are really active there. You might be surprised.

I have seen many forums whose stats say they have hundreds or even thousands of members and yet I only notice a few posts a day. That bespeaks a site that either retains spambot registrations as real members or neglects to upkeep their forums.

Also, questions to ask in terms of what value a forum might have:

Do they have a content site attached to the forums?
Are they an authority in the subject matter?
Do they have a ezine or mailing list? If so, how many subscribers?
Is there a source of revenue? What is it? How much?

Just some thoughts....

 

my forum right now has way more features and better design then the forum I am going to buy, the only reason I am interested in that forum is their members they have almost double number of users.. all of them look real to me even not everyone makes posts..

how much do you value new member for your forum alone.. I calculate if I spend on advertising or other ways of promotion for my forum it comes up to about $2-4 for advertising money for a new member

 

Tough to really say. My forums are very seasonal in nature -- http://www.merryforums.com -- so during November and December I get signups galore.

Then very few through the rest of the year.

I advertise at different times and my results vary. All of my users are legitimate but I couldn't hang on to them if I didn't reach out with a newsletter about once a month or so.

We still have daily activity and I'm happy with it. But I've come to realize that forum activity is just one component of a successful site. The forum is there for my site users...not my site users for the forums. They make it great, not me. My job is to provide compelling content that makes them want to talk about our subject matter. When I can get hundreds to talk about Christmas in the middle of May, I'm doing my job better than any advertising campaign ever will.

So I guess it might depend less on your advertising dollar than the nature of your forums and how big of an audience there is out there who want to talk about it.

 

are there any forum affiliate programs that help you to get more users?

 

I don't know of any but I think maybe others in these parts do. Here are some ways I've built membership:

1. Have a contest for existing members to refer new members. This was very effective. For the cost of 3 pounds of chocolate I was able to get about 100 new members in about 10 days.

2. Co-sponsor an event with other forums. This can be hard to do, especially if you're competing for members. One thing that worked for us this year was to offer RSS feeds of news from our site on other forums. We were surprised at how many other forums out there actually bit and what that meant to our every day membership levels.

3. Write and distribute articles. Offer popular ezines free articles that offer links to your forums. This has proven to be very effective.

4. Participate in your forums. Whenever I get an email question sent to me about some obscure thing I do two things: I respond to the sender personally and invite them to join the forums. Then I post the question on the forums. This usually is effective in gettng new forum members.

Give yourself some time. There isn't a quick fix for building forum membership. Time and quality content are key.

 

Good tips edzachary.
tx

 

ok would you pay $1 for member that would make 5 posts? in terms of money how much would you be willing to spend to get a member

 

edzachary has mentioned few good points!

I don't think it is good to motivate members by paying for post, instead of paying you should start some contest and give them free eBook/gift hamper or an opportunity to place links or small banner on your forum for certain time period.

 

Most forums greatly overstate their forum memberships. In most cases, the majority of forum members on any forum are spammers.

On my one forum I require people to post something within forty eight hours of signing up or their account is deleted. If I did not enforce such a policy I would have more than 4000 members on a site that really has only 330.

So, to answer your question do as the others have suggested. Don't rush into anything as you could be buying something that simply isn't worth the price.