Forums

Forums can be a major pain. Forums are addictive, drain enormous amounts of time, and are overflowing with people who don’t know what they are talking about. In some cases, they have devolved into adolescent chat rooms. (I was just reminded of that this weekend when I banned the same troll twice a day from one of the forums I own.)

On the other hand, forums are, hands down, the best place online to discover and share new ideas. No forums, and today I would be an employee. All of my inspiration, ideas, and initial direction in online business came from forums.

The experience of forum use is like searching for gold. Once every few months you’ll hit the jackpot and discover an incredibly valuable piece of information or a business contact. This reward system creates an addictive situation similar to gambling. Rather than money, you exchanged your time. (its worth noting any type of digital or printed medium can do this to you.)

As with any activity, how do you practice consumption with moderation? What is the line past which you are wasting your time?

It is in your best interest to be able to recognize and remember who is posting (so you can judge their credibility based on past posts.) Just the same, it is important for others to recognize and identify you so they can properly associate your advice with your identity (that presumes you give good advice.) For these reasons I have preferred to stick to smaller forums like Websitepublisher.net rather than frequent the big ones such as Sitepoint, Digitalpoint, and Webmasterworld.

So just how do you extract maximum benefit while minimizing wasted time?

Here are a few things I (try to) do:

1. Identify people that consistently give good advice. Bookmark a link to “Find all posts by X user”

2. Read thread titles as fast as possible by clicking on “New Posts.” Its surprisingly easily to keep up with even the most busy forums this way.

3. Skip over off topic posts.

4. Resist the urge to contribute unless you have something that will be valuable to readers — and when you do, keep it to a minimum. It is (generally) in your interest to post the best and most concise information to your own blog.

5. Completely ignore, or even block, idiots. Don’t even waste your time acknowledging their existence with a flame.

6. Read no more than one forum daily. Everything else should be no more than once a week, or less. If you are coming back twice or more in one day, its time to book a long trip to the Caribbean.

This is all common sense stuff. You don’t really have to read & post on forums. I have been scaling back my forum activity along with blog posting. Heck, I might even take a forum vacation one of these months.

Forums are hot internet properties this year, largely thanks to Jeremy Schoemaker and Lee Dodd showing just how profitable they can be. Unfortunately they are also very tricky to start, maintain, and grow — and most barely make it past the starting line.

I have started a grand total of 3 forums. The first is still up, and hardly gets any use at all. The second went up on a larger site than the first, but I couldn’t get anyone to use it. The third is live and has a very active niche community of around 5,000 users after 7 months.

Based off of what I have done, and what I have seen others do, here is how the typical “newbie” starts a forum:

- Uses lots of catagories and sections
- Hires paid posters or creates alternate nicks and talks to him/herself
- The forum is the entire site, or..
- The forum is a tiny “forum” link buried on a navigation bar
- Expects real visitors to start showing up once there is enough content to pull in SE traffic

These are all mistakes. When and if your visitors do stumble upon your forum few will register because the corrects functions are vacant. Your web site is a machine, if its set up wrong visitors will not convert into registered users — this is not magic.

Follow the “newbie” steps, and you aren’t going very far — at least for a while. Be prepared to wait 12 months or more before you see any real activity. Instead try these steps.

- Set up the forum with 5 sections max.

- Configure your forum to show a message to unregistered users asking them to join.

- E-mail two or three contacts within the niche and invite them to join and make a few posts.

- Send real targetted traffic to the forum. If its PPC its going to be expensive. Find blogs and other niche sites that will link to you. If you need to run a contest or do something noteworthy, do it.

- Most importantly, have a content site in your forum’s niche that you can direct traffic to indefinately. If you can’t do this, find another site(s) that can.

If you have the traffic, there is no reason you can’t set up a forum in an already flooded niche. Typically dominant players will have dissatisfied users.

Years of age result in a growing bureaucracy of rules which put many people off. Forum owners get lazy/complacant/afraid of change and their sites starts to look like a museum (yes, I do mean WMW.)

I believe that some people create rules and limitations in their head simply because they are so used to following the paths of others. For example, there is no reason you can’t start up multiple forums in the same niche, check out TanTalk and IamTan.com. Look similar? Check is out with a whois, it is the same.

Judging by the 80/20 rule it would appear that starting a forum is the hard part. Based on experience, its just the beginning of a very big journey.

Heres how much I’ve spent on my newest message board to date:

1 copy of vBulletin leased License - $85
1 copy of vBSEO - $149
1 copy of Photopost PHP Pro Image Gallery software - $129

Thats $363 so far. I could have done mostly the same thing for free — but I’m no programmer (nor do I like to rely software thats vulnerable to hackers.) Taking the “free” route would actually take up days or even weeks of my time. Instead, I’ve been able to spend that time focusing my energy on making the board grow.

I am not saying that phpBB and other free software is worthless — far from it. This board was originally started with phpBB. I quickly rolled it over to vBulletin when I saw how fast it was growing. If you are considering starting a board (or lots of them) I’d recommend you do the same.

The truth is, $363 is an absolute bargain. The software is regularly updated, very usuable, and has a huge user base who develops plug-ins and modifications. Contrast this with dropping thousands on having custom software developed to do the same thing. On some level I wish I was developing sites ten years ago, but at the same time I’m very happy to be here right now instead.

If you run a forum, or are thinking about starting one, check out this new article “The Ultimate vBulletin Optimization Guide” by Chris over at WebsitePublisher.net. In it he covers the basics including vBulletin SEO, getting users to sign up and start posting, and integrating a forum into your site.

I started a new board in mid November and I’m nearly at 600 members, growing at a rate of close to 50 a day. I can tell you that out of the box vBulletin just isn’t going to cut it if you want a fast growing forum.

I’ve been an internet user for over a decade (Jeez, I wish I had thought about making money online wayback then.)

One question I’ve asked myself over the years is how long do online communities last? There are communities which used to be huge which are either dead or are only small reflections of their past selves. There was a time when Geocities dominated the web. Who uses it today? Everyone uses Myspace or some other social networking blogging site.

The same question can be posed about MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying games.) Originally this “genre” was solely populated by the text based MUD. Then along came Ultima Online, then Everquest, now World of Warcraft. Interestingly Ultima Online is still alive and kicking — and its doing pretty damn well. Unlike Asheron’s Call, Ultima Online’s owners have cared for their game, provided updates and new content year after year.

When owners neglect their online communities users go elsewere. As pointed out over at Shoemoney, the once titan WebmasterWorld has been overtaken by Digitalpoint forums in terms of traffic. Could this have anything to do with the owner banning Google’s bots from the site and no providing a search function? Perhaps.

If you have built a big community online don’t grow complacent. If you want thatrevenue stream 10, 15, or even 20 years from now your community has to be nutured and cared for.