Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Ecommerce Hosting & Discussion : Question on forum sites

[first_step]

Hello folks! there's a new kid in town (or site)

I'm eager to start a community forum but I really am inexperienced in it........so how do I go about it and how do forums make $$ (if they do?)

Although I'm in IT .. I guess e-commerce is a domain I've never touched......

I would like to know how to start it..
for example I know about getting a domain name and possibly a webhosting company... perhaps a web designer for the page(or myself).......and.....then what?
How much knowledge does a webmaster/webdesigner need to run a simple forum?

Any preferred languages? cgi-bin? php? java?..

as you can see I'm eager to learn......ok I'm shutting up now and waiting for your responses

Cheers!

[Corey Bryant]

For the most part, the forum runs itself. Do you prefer UNIX or Windows? That will help in picking PHP or ASP / .NET. There are a lot of free forum software that is available to you.

As far as making money on the site - that would take time. Did you want to charge the people you sign up? If so - what makes it different from all the others? Did you want to charge advertisers? If so, how many visits do you get a day to warrant an advertiser to want to pay you?

I do not mean to be harsh, but I have helped a few people start a lot of forums. They get discouraged because it does not get active fast enough. Or not many people are signing up. It takes time to get the word out & (rightfully so), most forums do not allow advertising of their competitors.

[cdgcommerce]

Corey is right on... starting and maintaining a forum is not a quick and easy process. To build a popular forum, it will take a LOT of time, effort and patience.

That being said - if you are willing to dedicate the time and effort to do this you might want to partner with an experienced Web designer who can help you out with those items and work closely with you on it.

[first_step]

I got patience and time, I'm in IT, all I do is surf the web all day

Well I thought of offering just a community forum and while I'm doing it.. if it brings in some extra cash, why not?..

oh yeah I'm a windows guy (sorry...didn't really get into unix/linux that much )

[Corey Bryant]

Well a Windows guy here as well. Here are a few sites:
Snitz: http://www.snitz.com (I think they might be re-doing their entire site)
To see one with added mods: http://www.shnforum.com/
WebWizGuide: http://www.webwizguide.info/news/new....asp?NewsID=58
ASP-DEv XM: http://www.asp-dev.com/main.asp?page=1

I have used Snitz before - very happy with it. I am on one other forum as a mod that used WebWiz - the Admin is extremely happy there. The best thing - the above are free & they come with great (and free) technical support . Apparently the ASP-DEv actually made the Snitz & Snitz took that one over. But he has put a new one out there.

If you need any help let me know. I also have a forum which I just advertise other forums so let me @ least know the URL for it.

[first_step]

awesome!!! will check those out Corey, thanks a bunch!

[Incognito]

Profitable forums are based on quantity and quality of traffic. It takes a lot of promotion to build one. It takes a lot of managing and moderating to maintain one.

However, if you accomplish those goals, then one can certainly be made profitable through sales of advertising. I can certainly assure you that the one you are currently posting on is quite profitable.

[netgogo]

What do advertizers pay? Figures please
Just to have an idea

[Convergent]

The advertising revenue depends on the topic. Not all advertisers are willing to pay a lot. It is also a very complicated question, because you have many different advertising methods. In your early days, you won't be able to tap some of the higher paying means. TribalFusion is a big advertising network, but they won't accept anyone with fewer than 1000 uniques per day. I have talked to other add networks that require 100K impressions in a certain period of time.

Basically you have ...

Pay per Click - like Google Adsense, they pay you if someone clicks, and because they target to your site, its good. The problem is that in forum threads, it can't always figure out what to do, so you get public service ads a lot. Google prohibits disclosing anything about their payment rates.

CPM - in this case you will get paid a certain amount per 1000 impressions. Prices can go from $0.01 to $10... depends on the network, your topic, and your traffic. Unfortunately, the ads that pay the most are the most annoying ones. You can get $5 pretty easily for an annoying pop-up ad... but if you drive all your customers away, then you won't make anything.

Cost per Action - Probably the easiest ones to get started with are affiliate ads where you get paid if someone buys something from your ad. Amazon has a big program for this... that's where I started. I have dropped most of these after I figured out which ones are the most profitable.

Direct Ads - If you have traffic, people will buy space.

Here's the thing with a forum... in the beginning you won't have a lot of content, or a lot of unique visitors. Even if you become very active, it will take a long time to get your uniques up, and that's what advertisers want... not the same people every day. To get uniques, you have to get your forum indexed by the search engines, and in some cases that means that you need to make changes to the forum software to help the search engines more easily index it.

Hope that helps... it is a lot of work to build one... know that going in. There are tons of inactive forums for sale that people built, spent a month posting like crazy, and eventually gave up. You have to find a niche... that is the only way you will pull people in from other sites that are already out there.