Starting a Forum

[Jazzy]

What is a good amount of traffic to have that would make it worthwhile to start a forum?

[Rob]

I would say over 100, I know lisa has tryed a forum several times and lacked real traffic on it, but I think its definitely succeeded now. Sign up for Google analytics's if you haven't already, and look at your page views, and bounce rate.

http://www.google.com/analytics/

If your bounce rate is reasonably low and a lot of people view your sites content and don't just leave at your homepage, and have a decent amount of visitors I think they are all the factors you need for success using a forum.

[Theresa]

Someone on the SBI forums with a homeschooling site asked the same thing and I thought the response that someone gave her was good.

She was told that homeschooling might attract people that are feeling isolated and more inclined to connect with others in their situation. It was also suggested that she ask her subscribers if they would like a forum and see what kind of response there is.

On a less positive note, I have a forum on my craft site that is pretty much completely dead and I average around 100 unique visitors a day. So in most cases I would say you should have at least several hundred visitors a day, but you niche just might be an exception.

[Jazzy]

Theresa, that was me. I asked there, too. I am looking info on specific numbers of unique visitors per day that would support a forum.

[sammyspam]

i recently started a forum, in a week i have 20 members and have something like 20 or so new unique members a day. and its slowly growing. Im working on a more atttracticve home page while doing a small amount of promoting, since im at a stable 5 or so sign-ups per day now and im happy with that.


If you can get 50 unique visitors to your site everyday and even if you only get say 1/5 of them to sign-up.... 10 sign-ups per day isnt a bad start. I'd settle for that, it will slowly grow as friends tell friends.

I think thats a fine start for a forum, but thats open to opinion. Depends on your topic aswell.

[lisa]

I guess it depends on the kind of site and traffic you have but I would recommend at least 1,000 visits. I had 300-400 visits per day when I started my first forum and it still wasn't enough.

Plus you have to remember just because someone signs up for your forum, that doesn't mean they'll post. If you look at the forum statistics at the bottom of websitebabble.com, you'll see the disparity between the number of members and ACTIVE members. There are a lot of people that sign up and never post.

[sammyspam]

that is very true Lisa. 1 active poster > 5 un-active

The 20 people on my forum are all active and 4 out of 5 of the ones signing up each day are remaining active. So you can see why i am happy with that rate. Im slowly increasing my activity.

If your getting good quality traffic of people that enjoy using forums and know how to use a forum, then you got more chances of them sticking around.

Ive already had a few people need alot of help, having no idea how to use a forum.