Why forum business is so difficult?

Forums always start at a dead end, they need active members to gain more active members (who wants to join a dead forum?)

The best bet would be to make a decent site and once you get enough returning people open some forums

 

The most tough part in fourms is not its start but it is "flow".I think nobody should think of making forums until unless they have good traffic already in pocket and willing to participate.

 

I think its harder for me to get more members at my website than anyone here. My website is about rock / metal, and since its in Dutch, I don’t have that much members.

I know I must try harder on promoting my website…

 

Forums can make quite a bit of money but it really does require so, so, so much more effort than making the same amount with a normal website. I mean, I get close to 3 million impressions a month on mine and that translates to a few hundred dollars a month. I can't even begin to fathom the amount my site would make if it was just one optimised page but this gives you some idea of how hard it is to make money with a forum and it is incredibly hard to make it big.

 

3 million impressions and not even 1K/month? thats really disappointing. I feel sorry for you dude. I think one should use a forum in close combination with blogs/sites. If you have a stablished site then you your regular visitors to visit and post in ur forum and if u have a successful forum(like yours) then u can use it to launch your new sites. so what kind of forum do u have? and when did u start?

 

I don't want to intrude on the initial thread but that is a fair point and I do agree on the new site launching thing. Having an established site with a huge member base helps a lot for market research, launching similar sites and of course with all those posts, coop weight.

The topic of my forum is teens, which really doesn't help in the slightest and it has been running for almost 2 years now.

My opinion though is that generally to start a site solely based around a forum is one huge effort for incredibly little reward and generally it takes a lot of time. The only reason I started up mine was because I didn't really know much better at the time and because it seemed like a pretty good way to pay for uni, which it will do but it has sapped a lot out of my life at the same time.

That said, it's a whole different kettle of fish if you're adding a forum to an existing site - my advice here though would be to make sure you have a huge memberbase before you do so. It'll fail if you only have a few hundred members (unless they all post of course but I doubt that).

 

3 million visitors per month for a two year old forum doesn't sound too bad atall. Infact i am little surprised that how come you are earning so less with it. is it something to do with google's anti-pornography policy? anyway the reason why i started this thread was to learn from all you forum webmaster's experiences, so tell us something about your early struggle like waiting hopelessly for members to join for months

 

Big budget: you need a big budget to manage a forum initially u need to spend to get people in

Active members: There has to be atleast 20 + active members helping the forum grow constantly geting intresting ideas, information, ensuring that new members keep flowing

Promotions: Promote the forum with contest , prizes, reward your members, if they are happy from ur forum, its a sure success

the name

 

Once you grow your forum to a decent amount of members, do not forget this minor way to make additional money.
EMAIL

Not emails to the members every day, but the first email to the members should tell them when and how often they will get an email from you.
Once a week at the worst, once a month is best.
Make it informative, something about the forum, spotlight the top posters, stuff like that.
Either sell ads to members, or have your own ads.
Maybe a combination of both.

 

Anyone else starting a forum doesn't really stand much of a chance.
DP doesn't really leave anything to be desired.......well maybe a Dutch heavy metal section.

I find the occasional email from DP refreshing, rather than bombarding your inbox all the time like some so called 'gurus'.

 

Yeah, some of those "gurus" do tend to go over the dam with their emails.
Always the same emails though, as all those "gurus" push each others products, so out of 10 "guru" emails, 9 of them are exactly the same!

Yeah, like I said, once a month is good, more often can be seen as bad.

 

I wish, it's about 60,000-80,000 unique visitors a month and they all load up quite a lot of pages.

Whilst this is true in some cases, it is possible to spend absolutely nothing on advertising and try and spread the site through word of mouth. Of course, my site lends itself to this a lot more but viral marketing is certainly possible and lends itself particularly well to communities.

 

Very Interesting Conversation is Going On About Forum.

I am glad to be a part of it but at the same time I feel its not so easy as I was thinking. Requires a great deal of commitment.

Very True.

 

I have noticed one particular practice among many forum owners - giving moderators to new members. They think that people would be more interested in the forums if they are made moderators. But actually they are hurting their own forums by doing this. Ask yourself - how would u feel if you see a forum with more number of moderators then members? And if you are asked to be a moderator just for posting couple of replies on some one's threads?

 

So true why would some one join a dead forum, when there are 1000s of active forum for that topic. To get a forum started you need to add a a lot of topic your self.

 

Nowadays its hard to start a successfull forum unless you have a unique topic to base it on or if you have a member base before you start to back it up. I see alot of people thinking that they can just start a phpbb forum and it will be amazing and popular.

 

Very true. Starting a forum fell into the "get rich on the web" trap. Mainly I think that should start a forum on a topic that you have a strong passion for....because its going to be a lot of work initially and like anything worthwhile, difficult to attain. IM

 

you should try putting google ads like how i did on www.fiatforums.com
it works wonders

are u talking about roseindahouse?? the forum looks good, and has many members and has ads on the top...you should be making around 500$ a month..

 

Yes it could be hard to maintain a forum. Even if you - the forum owner - are pretty active. Sometimes forums I see, have spurts of growth than go through a dry period. It is like reinventing yourself and/or site all over again and again and again.

 

I used the same approach..very effective

First I acquired about 100 customers and then I opened the forum (@ www.MarketersCafe.com) Its picking up slowand steady!!!

I haven't yet started advertising though and will start very soon.

Annanya Arya