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How To Start A Hopping Forum From Scratch

by Hardgainer
19 replies
There's no doubt starting a static website (ie: 3-5 page direct sales website with a salespage, squeezepage, members area, etc) from scratch and a forum from scratch are completely different.

I've done quite a few of the former, but I have absolutely no experience in the latter and would like to get some input here from people that do. Keep in mind, I'm talking about starting from scratch... no rankings, no visitors, no contributors.

A couple ideas I've thought about are as follows:

1. Hiring an article writer to contribute a few posts that give value to the forum which would help retain readership and maybe convert guests to members. To me, this seems like it's not very cost effective but I haven't tried it yet so I can't say my thoughts are correct on the matter. I realize, though, that time is money and if I don't hire someone to write for me I'll have to write more often myself.

2. Commenting on related blogs, getting into conversation with the blog owners, and drawing them to your forum. I'm actually doing this now, but they tend not to go any further than looking at the index page as I'm the only one who's made posts.

3. Promoting that your forum allows "do-follow" links to draw in people with related forums/blogs/websites. The problem I see with this is that it almost encourages spammers to drop by for a post or two and nothing more... and with nothing valuable. I've made a 5 post minimum in order to deactivate no-follow links so we'll see how this goes.

4. Finding related forums and asking if the owner would be interested in swapping posts... "I'll contribute to your forum if you contribute to mine", so to speak. The only problem I see with this is most of the forum owners you come into contact with will probably already have a big head-start on you and won't feel it's an even trade-off.

Is there anyone here that's gone through starting a forum completely from scratch that can lend some thoughts or suggestions on the matter? All input would be greatly appreciated!
#forum #hopping #scratch #start
  • Profile picture of the author raradra
    I run an MMA forum and a video game forum and neither makes much money other than adsense. You can hire post writers at places like fiverr and freelancer and pay .10 - .50 cents a post but honestly it gets expensive waiting for posts that you don't pay for. Using twitter and facebook helps some but otherwise it just takes time like any other site.
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    • Profile picture of the author Will Edwards
      Originally Posted by raradra View Post

      I run an MMA forum and a video game forum and neither makes much money other than adsense. You can hire post writers at places like fiverr and freelancer and pay .10 - .50 cents a post but honestly it gets expensive waiting for posts that you don't pay for. Using twitter and facebook helps some but otherwise it just takes time like any other site.
      And then, the next thing that happens is the spammers find you and you end up spending a lot of your valuable time deleting posts containing viagra and porn.

      One time, I purchased some Membership Software for my site and when I installed it, it corrupted my database wiping out my main Forum. That represented quite a bit of effort on my part and it was instantly gone.

      After I got over the annoyance, I actually became grateful to have been liberated from all those mundane tasks. It turned out to be the best bit of software I ever purchased. I don't use it, but it did me an enormous favour.

      Anyway, I'm not trying to put you off. Your experience may turn out to be entirely different from to mine.

      Will
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      • Profile picture of the author Hardgainer
        Raradra, 10-50 cents per post doesn't sound bad... are they at least decent in terms of quality? Even if not, if the poster could come up with some simple 1-2 paragraph posts with a thought-provoking question at the end it would stimulate some conversation.

        Dalyinx, thanks for the insight. I'll look for a few popular chats on my niche when I get up tomorrow. What do you find different about them vs forums?

        Will, are you saying your experience with forums was pretty much bad altogether? I'm hoping with the post limit before deactivating no-follow links will help with spam, and I may state this fact in a clearly visible place. Not sure how I'll fare with this, but I think it's worth a shot.

        I also had to do a complete re-install after I had spent 2 days setting everything up and adding posts due to a malfunction in the forum software, but I'm going to keep chugging along at least until I see how things go after a few months of putting in some good hard work.
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        • Profile picture of the author Will Edwards
          Originally Posted by Hardgainer View Post

          Will, are you saying your experience with forums was pretty much bad altogether?
          I would love to get a decent forum going, but my experience has been that they are difficult to get started and once they do start they can consume a tremendous amount of time with moderation. Of course, you should model Allen's approach and get the members to moderate for you, but that takes time. You have to get the thing rolling first before you will be able to find your mods.

          Just one thing I would say. These days, some forums have their accounts integrated with Twitter and Facebooks accounts. Personally, I think you should have less problems with spam using such software because if you ban someone, they would have to go through the business of creating a new social account to get back in and I think that would be much more tedious for them.

          Will
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  • Profile picture of the author Dalyinx
    I have a forum on one of my sites, but it's secondary and I don't put much effort into it. I've just been getting friends to post on it, for the most part.

    I'm also an administrator on a fairly popular roleplaying forum (~1,000 members, ~100,000 posts.) For that one, we started off with a small member base (10 or so) and just built it up from there. We'd go into related chats and tell people to check out the forum. After we had ~80 regular users, we created a team dedicated to acquiring new members.

    Lately, we've started a campaign to acquire other forums. One thing I noticed when scouting out other forums is that a lot have a 'forum games' forum. These seem to generate a lot of posts.

    Other than that, I just suggest getting some friends together and having them post on your forum. Chats are a great way to acquire new members. When using chats, go for quality and not quantity. You want to talk to the person and get them really interested in your forum so that they'll be more inclined to post on it. Even having 10-20 active members will give your forum quite a few posts and form a foundation for further growth.
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    • Profile picture of the author supernal
      Originally Posted by Dalyinx View Post

      I have a forum on one of my sites, but it's secondary and I don't put much effort into it. I've just been getting friends to post on it, for the most part.

      I'm also an administrator on a fairly popular roleplaying forum (~1,000 members, ~100,000 posts.) For that one, we started off with a small member base (10 or so) and just built it up from there. We'd go into related chats and tell people to check out the forum. After we had ~80 regular users, we created a team dedicated to acquiring new members.

      Lately, we've started a campaign to acquire other forums. One thing I noticed when scouting out other forums is that a lot have a 'forum games' forum. These seem to generate a lot of posts.

      Other than that, I just suggest getting some friends together and having them post on your forum. Chats are a great way to acquire new members. When using chats, go for quality and not quantity. You want to talk to the person and get them really interested in your forum so that they'll be more inclined to post on it. Even having 10-20 active members will give your forum quite a few posts and form a foundation for further growth.
      I'm an administrator on, and creator of, the above-mentioned roleplaying forum. As Dalyinx mentioned, we had a small but dedicated member base that kept the forum going through the occasional drought, but we made sure to constantly grow and update the forum while we personally advertised it to get people on the forum. Then, as said, when we got to be what I consider a reasonable size, we set up a team. They do the regular SEO stuff, which increases our exposure, which nets new members, which increases the content and feeds into the cycle.

      Forum acquisition may not work with everyone, depending on the niche, but it worked out quite well with the roleplaying niche that my site is dedicated too. We were able to up our content by 30k posts in a single merger.

      As far as generating content on your forum, forum games are one option but so are hitting on the easily picked up on and wide-spread conversation topics. Music likes for example is sure to net you quite a few, on-going replies. Movie quotes or general discussions on movies. Or books. Things of that nature.
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  • Profile picture of the author raradra
    In my experience the post quality has been fine. Be sure to use a place that you don't have to release payment until your quality standards are met and be sure the writer knows up front what your expectations are.
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  • Profile picture of the author Wide
    A little hint: Start with a low number of forums in your forum, like 2-3. This will make it looks much more busy than a forum with 10-15 forum.

    You can then expand with more forums as the current ones grows. People will also start to ask for more forum as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author bamidele_ba
    I think what matters most is your niche. If you're starting in a less competitive niche it can be more effective and easy but if you plan to start in highly competitive niches like the "make money online" niche you will need to have an initial momentum/influence.
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    • Profile picture of the author Hardgainer
      Thanks Rarardra, Freelancer looks pretty good... you can post exactly what you want done and pay after the job has been done like you mentioned.

      Will, I hear what you're saying. I'm not in a HUGE hurry and am willing to stick it out for a while. I like the idea of member moderation and think getting members to do it shouldn't be that hard once things start picking up.

      As for the Facebook or Twitter login integration, I like the idea and I don't. Other than helping with spam in the way you mentioned it would probably help in terms of getting the word out. I'm sure you know how things can spread on social networking sites like that

      The thing I don't like is... and this is only if registration requires a new user to have an account with Facebook, Twitter, etc... people without those accounts already may not signup simply because they don't want to go through the hassle of creating one of those accounts first. But then again, who doesn't have Facebook nowadays? I think I'll look into this some more.
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      • Profile picture of the author Roy Penrod
        Try to find people with an interest in your topic and personally invite them to participate in your forum. Just explain you're trying to get it off the ground and you'd like to seed it with some really good conversations to show visitors what you expect from them.

        You can also try running a Facebook ad targeting people with that particular interest. That should get you a quick burst of activity.

        For the long run, you can also build a Facebook fan page for the forum and get all of your forum members to "Like" it.

        In the beginning, you're probably going to have to hang out on the forum a lot and show people how you want them to interact. Ask questions, start conversations, and lead by example.

        Roy
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        • Profile picture of the author howinfo
          We started a forum from scratch not too long ago and I think that the only way to get it going is to get some posts in yourself or get somebody else to do it for you. There is a forum posting service that is quite good that you can use: paidforumposting.com

          And Wide is right, start out with low number of forums as that was the mistake we did, just had too many forums so we did cut down the number of forums as much as we could and that did help.
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          • Profile picture of the author Hardgainer
            I've never done anything with Facebook advertising but have heard some great things... particularly the targeting. I just wonder if that would be something better used after there are already plenty of conversations going on.

            I've already created a Facebook page for my forum, but haven't done anything with it yet. Having forum members "like" it sounds like a great idea... once I get some members, of course. There's also the "like this" button you can generate now with Facebook For Developers that you can put right on the forum.

            Yes, that's a good suggestion, Wide. Other than the forum rules and lobby section I only have 5 forum topics. I think I'll stay with just these for now.

            EDIT: I really like the idea about giving something away as a posting reward. I'm not too worried about monetizing yet so this sounds great... would probably combat my reluctance to use paid advertising with a lack of members too

            I'm in the process of outlining a routine I've been using lately and was going to use it as content on a squidoo lens, but maybe I should create an ebook out of it instead and use it for this.
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            • Profile picture of the author Roy Penrod
              Originally Posted by Hardgainer View Post

              I'm in the process of outlining a routine I've been using lately and was going to use it as content on a squidoo lens, but maybe I should create an ebook out of it instead and use it for this.
              It doesn't have to be an "either/or" thing. You can use the same content for both. You'll hit different crowds of people with it.

              You're much more likely to hit me, for example, with the email freebie than the Squidoo lens.

              Turn it into a video and post it on YouTube. You'll hit another crowd.

              Roy
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  • Profile picture of the author Victor Edson
    I got a forum going pretty fast once, but ended up not making much money because of the niche it was in.

    I offered a free report on a related topic to people who had 10 approved posts. I'd have 15-20 people per day posting away. I later started using that report for optins-and it made much more money that way...but it was an effective tool to get the forum jumpstarted.
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  • Profile picture of the author tryinhere
    Originally Posted by Hardgainer View Post

    Is there anyone here that's gone through starting a forum completely from scratch that can lend some thoughts or suggestions on the matter? All input would be greatly appreciated!
    I have a virgin forum literally 2 days old, for now my concern is more in set up and testing over and above visitors, just for now, from there i am debating on hiring paid forum posters from fiverr or not / part of me says you need content posters to attract more and part of me says its not real / so school is out on that.

    I plan to set up some of products as give aways on the site, so for example stay 30 days / post 30 posts and i will give you a free copy of my ebook rather than you having to pay for it.

    Really for me learning the new language of the site / and its set up is my tough part.

    / happy to share or even if you pm a link i could throw a few starter posts for you / dependent on topic of course.
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  • Profile picture of the author dahava
    Have you ever tried/had any luck with Squidoo and their pages/forums? I started a "lens" to enhance my Saddleback Leather Reviews[/url] site but haven't seen much return yet (although it's free...just time). Just wondering. Thanks.
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
    Matt, I was in on the start of a very popular forum in a small business niche. We actually started as an email discussion list consisting of a group of fans of one of the best-selling books in the niche. The author also participated.

    Eventually, we outgrew the discussion list, and the author started a site with the forum. It took off quickly because we had a committed group that already knew each other via email and were comfortable posting to the group.

    We also weren't shy about telling others about our little club. It wasn't long before we had hundreds of members, and the members tended to stick, even after moving to a paid model in an attempt to both slow down the growth and discourage the spammers.

    Maybe something like that would work for you...

    Put out the product, and make membership in either a discussion list or forum one of the bonuses.
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    • Profile picture of the author gixxer
      I have the "problem" of having a hopping and active Facebook Group (nearly 10,000 members) and have consistently NOT been able to get that community to a vBulletin forum on the same topic. I'm trying again currently and hope the larger number of Facebook "fans" will help the forum take off...

      I've spoken to Patrick O'Keefe author of "Managing Online Forums" and read part of his book. His site and book are a good place to start for sure.

      I think the main thing is to build a good forum and "talk" to the few people you can get to show up until it takes off.

      My GUT FEELING is that some sort of Facebook integration would take my particular forum to the next level since my following is so Facebook-centric. I'm currently looking into FB integration for vBulletin...

      I sent you a PM, Hardgainer...

      Adam
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