Cons and Pros of a Forum

Sighter · #1 (**permalink**) 08-29-2009, 10:25 PM

Hey everyone,

Was thinking about putting a forum on my latest website bmx tricks now but I'm still a bit hesitant. If this is to much to ask don't worry about it ,but I would really appreciate it if someone could tell me the cons and pros of having a forum on your website.

jazzguy · #2 (**permalink**) 08-30-2009, 04:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sighter

Hey everyone,

Was thinking about putting a forum on my latest website bmx tricks now but I'm still a bit hesitant. If this is to much to ask don't worry about it ,but I would really appreciate it if someone could tell me the cons and pros of having a forum on your website.

Hmmmm...I'll let Lisa field this question...I'm sure she will have a lot to say on this subject...

Rammuny · #3 (**permalink**) 08-30-2009, 02:16 PM

Pros
*Builds a community
*Drives traffic to your site
*Great way to social network with your community
*Builds credibility

Cons
*Can make your site look abandoned if you don't have many members
*Spammers
*Can be time consuming
*There are hundreds of forums so it's hard to first get it to become active

lisa · #4 (**permalink**) 08-30-2009, 02:27 PM

LOL, Lyle. So true.

I was actually thinking of doing a video about this very subject.

PROS
1) Build credibility for yourself as the owner (if you are active)
2) Earn money from sponsor ads and other affiliations
3) It can alleviate email volumes if you direct people here on your contact form

CONS
1) Time consuming. Even with mods, I still like to be involved in my own forum so I have to check in multiple times a day and sometimes it can be a chore (especially when you have multiple sites to manage)
2) Spam
3) Spam
4) Spam
5) Oh I forgot to mention....Spam
6) It can be challenging to get it going/active.

I know I made a big deal about spam a few days ago, but quite honestly it has gotten better since I installed Honeypot (thanks TechieGuy), CheckSpam, and use RE-CAPTCHA (especially the bot spam). As I said in the other thread, manual spam just comes with the territory and you just have to deal with it.

Sighter · #5 (**permalink**) 09-01-2009, 05:09 PM

Sry for not responding quicker but my computer had a little heart attack. Thanks for all the info it helped me make the jump into making a forum and if you ever need a banner or any type of graphic make sure to hit me up. Oh and Rammuny just read your twitter article and its great! Because of it im getting 100+ visitors per day.

Again, thank you all.

jonathanfigaro · #6 (**permalink**) 09-01-2009, 05:16 PM

My advice is to take the risk with a leap of faith. You will never know how something pans out until you actually take a step. Pro's and Con's are in every major or small business that exist. You cannot base your likely hood of success on this. There have been people who started in worst conditions , but have succeeded. YOU CAN DO THE SAME! So, just go full blown and if you can, throw a bit of caution to the wind as you begin your journey to success.

Jordy3738 · #7 (**permalink**) 09-01-2009, 09:14 PM

I've had two forums that i started without having sufficient traffic from another website to help sustain the forum.

Neither one really ever took off very well.

Facebook is such a hot item these days, I think it would be hard to get any community going now unless you had a lot of traffic at your main site already.

I had many giveaways and incentives for people to post and revisit, but neither forum every was successful.

SPAM was a major problem

fastandfurious · #8 (**permalink**) 09-09-2009, 02:42 AM

I´m working as a webmaster for a site that runs a forum with now about 9000 members containing about 90.000 posts. It can be quite interesting to run a forum, especially if you´re interested in the topic the forum is about (to be honest: you HAVE to be interested in the topic, otherwise you won´t be able to deal with the great amount of work, that comes when running a forum

). It can also drive a lot of traffic to your website and you can earn money by using Google Adsense or similar programs.

But as i mentioned, a forum means a lot of work:

- a dead forum doesn´t look good. So you have to do a lot of promotion for the forum (online and offline)

- you have to deal with spam

- updates of the forum software have to be installed immediately when the were released (to prevent security risks)

- you have to check regularly what´s going on in your forum. Sometimes I had even "battles" between forum members - and you´re also responsible for the content of the forum (even when it´s created by members)!

- there are many forums all over the internet about nearly every topic you can think of - so it´s quite hard to find your niche to make users join your forum and none of the 23.000 other forums about this topic.

So all in all: you have to be 1.000 % positive about your forum topic, otherwise it won´t work.

cyberprofit · #9 (**permalink**) 10-16-2009, 12:24 PM

It takes a lot to get a forum going these days. The key is to make your forum look active. In the beginning, that is hard to do since you really don't have any members. However, there a few tips and tricks that others have used such as scrapers to populate their forum...although I don't endorse it. Once their forum is populated, they go through and edit some of the post to make them more unique. The thinking behind the concept is that everyone like to hang out at where there's a crowd. In this case using a script creates a fake crowd.

sequencehosting · #10 (**permalink**) 10-16-2009, 03:27 PM

My forum attempt failed so I can't really add much to this post. I do however think it would be a good idea to create "fake posts" to make your forum look busy from the beginning. I agree with jonathanfigaro if you don't try it you will never know and it you do try it do you best to make it successful.

jay144 · #11 (**permalink**) 10-18-2009, 09:03 AM

I have never heard of scripts like that. I surely need to use one for my forum because people have joined but that is really it. Nobody has started any conversations. But I do think I need to fluff it up a little bit to give the illusion that it is busy. People don't want to respond to an empty forum I don't blame them.

askthetrainer · #12 (**permalink**) 10-19-2009, 01:11 AM

CONS: Time Consuming

That's all you need to know.... unless you have a fully established website/blog with a ton of content, a forum will take too much of your time to be worth it...

rodrico101 · #13 (**permalink**) 10-19-2009, 02:26 PM

Time consuming is true. I run a private forum for buyers of one of my ebooks. I have around 200 members with about 10 being very active. I thought more would sign up (I have sold twice as many ebooks and the private forum was one of my selling points).

It is based on event ticket sales and the market and what's hot etc. I have thought about just opening it up to everyone and creating a bigger base and try to make some more affiliate money.

Since it's private I hand approve every member (again time consuming). I would say that 90% of the sign-ups are spammers.

Do you think I should open it up to the public? Would it kill my ebook sales?

Rod

jay144 · #14 (**permalink**) 10-21-2009, 12:51 PM

I think it is worth giving it a shot. You won't know unless you try.

Money123 · #15 (**permalink**) 10-21-2009, 08:55 PM

The best way to add a forum to the site is how? Any good ways to build from scratch or would you have to get some custom template from someone add the ads and redo the color and background etC?

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