How to market a new forum?

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Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius

I Work For Books
Mar 13, 2007
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I'm thinking of starting a forum site and before I invest any money in buying vBulletin and other needed software I want to know as much as possible about forum site creation and marketing.

Is there any good resources, books, video, programs or tips that you could recommend me for starting and attracting new users to the forum site?

What are most common problems that you face when starting a new forum site?

Thanks.
 


i would search THESE forums for "vbulletin" and read everything you can find.

but a few pointers off the top of my head:
  1. definitely buy vbulletin
  2. if you're serious, buy vbseo which will help with seo tremendously
  3. nobody wants to join a dead forum, so make fake users and do some posting yourself
  4. you can also get paid posting at forumshock.com - i've used them and they do a great job
  5. hold a contest and promote it via ppc advertising
  6. get backlinks backlinks backlinks which, i'm not great at so you should ask elsewhere for the best advice on that
 
BTW, talking about ForumShock.com ...

I'm planning to start a forum on a very specific topic, which needs some knowledge about that.

What are the chances that those people will write posts that are content relevant?

Or do they just re-write the posts from other forums with the same topic?
 
you should contact bryan le who owns forum schock. his blog is at bryanle.net. i would just ask him... he has a variety of writers. and in the worste case scenario, the members seem like newbs and you're there as the admin giving them answers and posting even better material. it creates a back and forth that will encourage participation.
 
Why is vB so essential? There are loads of quality opensource forum software to choose from, for example myBB. vB is expensive and I would think twice about dumping such sum on forum software. When joining a forum I couldn't care less what software it uses, it's all about the community. Maybe vB is the best one seo-wise? But that claim needs to be proven..
 
If you think vB is expensive, then you are in the wrong business. Its essential because you don't want to waste your time with your forum getting hacked.

The #1 most important thing about a blog launch is -- where are the first posters coming from? You absolutely can not rely on Google crawling your forum and sending you targetted visitors based off of the posted content.

My best forums have always come from existing content sites where I added them after I was already getting several hundred or several thousand unique visitors a day.

In WickedFire's case Jon had lots of contacts from other forums and blogs. People were hearing all about WickedFire before it launched. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it did not take very long to reach the first 1,000 members.
 
Starting a forum isn't as hard as you think. If you've gotten this far in the game you most likely know your options and after doing a little bit of research you'll see why vbulletin is the better option. If you are serious about starting a forum...or anything for that matter its always best to do it right. And if you wanna do it right then you need vbulletin. Need proof? Look carefully...wickedfire is running vbulletin. Not only that but the greatest thing about vbulletin is the support forum where you can go and get instant responses to even the most mundane and newbie questions as you go through the learning curve.

Oh yea...the hardest part of a forum isn't getting it started but making it grow. It takes effort to keep members coming, keep members posting, and keep members returning. Not that its a full time job, but the more reading you do before launch the better off you'll be further down the stretch.
 
SecurityFocus

"vbulletin" returns 137 results, my afromentioned MyBB has 93 results.

Every software is vulnerable to attacts, open or closed, paid or free. Wanting to save whatever money vB costs has nothing to do with being in the wrong business. I just think that you'd be better investing that money elsewhere, in you forum promotion / contests etc. and get vB latter (if it's really a must to you).
 
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