by James on August 30, 2011
So you have decided that you are going to start a forum?
That is a big step that a lot of people have made lately. It seems that discussion forums are more popular than they have ever been. I attribute this to the fact that the Internet is more popular than it has ever been too.
More people are able to connect with others. First things first, you have to decide on a topic that interests you. To do this, just think of some things that you are really knowledgeable about and can consider your self to be an expert in. If you pick some thing that you only know a little bit about, it can be really hard to create quality posts to keep people interested in your forum later on.
One you have selected a few topics that interest you, you can start to narrow them down by eliminating ones that do not interest others. For instance, if Al Pacino is one of your interests, it would be really hard to get an active discussion forum going for just him. It should be a topic that interests others as well. I am not saying that you can not make an Al Pacino forum, I am just saying that is going to make it ten times harder on you to get people to join when it is some thing that specific. Maybe instead of Al Pacino, you could make a forum about classic movies, movies starring Pacino, or some thing to that affect.
If you are having trouble and you can not even think of a topic, there are a few things that you can do to get the brain going and find some thing that interests you. Check out some of the forum topsites, which you can just Google that, and see some of the other forums that are already out there. You can also go to some admin forums and see what some of the other forum owners around the world have come up with.
That should surely give you some ideas of forums that you could come up with.
When starting an online community it’s often debatable whether you should go alone or go in with a team of staff ready to work. So to help you make up your mind I am going to list advantages of both sides to whether it’s better to go alone or with a team.
Starting a Forum Alone
- You don’t need to pay staff. This will keep you out of the red at the beginning. When a forum is first created it will be difficult if not impossible to bring in the big bucks straight away so this would mean you would have to pay your super moderators and co-admins out of your own pocket.
- You don’t need to share profits. When you decide to monetize your forum you will not need to share any profits with anyone since you don’t have any staff to share it with.
- It will be completely your forum. You don’t need to listen to any input from any other staff because there is none. This will mean the forum is entirely yours and will be the way you want it. Whether that be the forum skin or the amount of forums and sub-forums you have, it’s totally up to you.
Starting a Forum with a Team
- You don’t have to do all the promotion yourself. Promoting your board is a long and daunting task. But you have to do it in order to receive the traffic and activity for your forum. It can be very hard work and it’s the most common killer for forum admins and that’s why important to have a few people taking up that job.
- You you don’t have to pay the full hosting and maintenance costs. You will not have to pay the full hosting cost of the forum. As well as the domain name or any forum licence you may purchase. With a co-admin you can share expenses if you are willing to agree to share the profits.
- Let others keep your board clean while you focus on other tasks. Have moderators clean your board while you can focus on other things such as driving traffic to your forum, server maintenance and community management. Saying that there might not be many posts when your forum starts so you could be wasting your money and time as the moderators will have nothing to clean up.
- An active forum team will create and active forum. If you have moderators and admins posting regularly it will create a sense of activity on the forum and that’s what new visitors look for when joining a forum, activity. This could potentially increase your visitor to member ratio.
We can all see the benefits from going alone or starting a team. There is no real loser in this situation so the choice is totally up to you and how you administrate. I have started a forum in both situations and slightly favor going with a team due to the ability of creating an active atmosphere around the board.
What’s Your Say?
Do prefer to start a forum alone or with a team? Do you know any other advantages for starting a forum alone or with a premade team? Post a comment below I would love to hear them.