Webupon

To start, there are several different forum software’s you could use. They all have their own positives and negatives, however, most of them work basically the same. Most larger forums prefer Vbulletin (VB) or Invision Power Boards (IPB) because they seem to respond faster and have many cool built in features and add ons.

Here are a few of the forum softwares available with prices:

• vBulletin – Instant Community- $85 for 1 year Leased License – $160 for All time owned license
• Invision Power Services :: Corporate :: Homepage – $149 for Standard License – $299 for Business License
• phpbb.com • Maintenance – Free
• Free Open Source forum software – Yet another Bulletin Board – YaBB! – Free
• MyBB – Free PHP and MySQL Forum Software – Free
• UseBB — The Usable Forum Software – Free
• Home of SMF: Free PHP and MySQL forum software – Free

If you are planning on building a fairly large forum then go with the Vbulletin or IPB paid license’s. If your forum is just for friends and family to discuss certain topics then the Free scripts should work like a charm.

Running a forum can become a major business. Some of the top forums on-line earn in excess of $1,000,000 a year in profit. Take a look at the following link for thousands of the largest forums on-line:
The largest Message Boards and Forums on the web!

It’s not easy though to build a community as large as those featured on Big-Boards.com, as there is a lot of competition and you need a lot of patience and persistence when starting out.

Some tips you may find helpful when starting a forum, and getting activity to it are:

Don’t create too many folders

If you spread the discussion out into too many different areas then your forum will look dead. Start with just a few folders and topics and expand as your traffic increases

Be active, and make your forum look active

People don’t want to bother registering for a forum when there is no one there to talk to. Make sure you as an admin posts frequently, and if you have to create a few extra accounts to make it look like there is discussion going on to start

Choose a few moderators

By giving a few people moderator privileges to begin with, they will become active fairly quickly.

Hold referral or posting contests

Some of the forum scripts have built in referral systems. Hold a contest to see how many people your members can refer, then give away cash to the winner. Be careful that people don’t make duplicate accounts by referring themselves

Use SEO

Of course you should optimize your forum for search engines. If you are running a Vbulletin forum, then check out VBSeo.com which is an add on to make your forum more Search engine friendly.

Pay people to make your forum look active

There are several sites out there where you can pay them and they will have dozens of members come to your forum and create activity on a per post basis. Some of these sites include:

• Forum Posting – Paid Forum Posting Service and Advertising Solutions
• http://www.postonmyforum.com
• idealposting. Forum Paid Posting. When Quality Comes First.
• postingpays.com

Use all the strategies we point out in the “How to get traffic to your site” guide.

Once you get traffic to your forum you will want to at least cover your hosting or server costs.

Thus we need to discuss the various ways to monetize your forum:

Adsense

Adsense can be OK for forums. It’s probably not as good on forums as it is on blogs or information sites but many top forums make enough to live off of Adsense. The best place to post adsense ads would be at the top of the forum as well as under the first post of a thread. This way when members are reading a thread the ad is right smack in the middle of their line of site. Try different color schemes and sizes and see which ones work best for you. We find that ads that blend in with your color scheme work best. Another good idea for using Adsense on a forum is to place it as the default signature of members who do not have a signature.

Sell text links

Try selling small text links on the top or bottom of your forum. Webmasters like forum wide text links since forums can have anywhere from 100 to 10,000,000 pages. This means their link will appear that many times.

Offer Paid Subscriptons

Offer extra folders, increased Pm storage, special member titles, and other features to members if they upgrade to a premium membership for a fee. There are many forums including this one that offer Premium memberships and do very well. Make sure you have a steady base of traffic before going this route though.

Seek Donateons

Although many webmasters don’t like e-begging, forums seems to do very well with donations. If you have a loyal member base then more then likely many of them would be happy to donate to the forum in order to keep it’s hosting costs in check.

Sell private ads or find targeted affiliates

You can sell banners on a per week basis or find affiliate programs related to the topics of your forum. Sometimes these types of ads can outperform Google Adsense.

Sell Sponsored Sticky posts

If you didn’t notice, most forums have sticky posts that go to the top of each folder. These posts get the most attention since they remain at the top. Sell targeted ads in your folders and make them stickies.

Create a Marketplace within your forum

Many sites like SitePoint.com have marketplaces within their forum. Like sitepoint you can charge a fee for members to post a topic in a particular marketplace folder. For instance SitePoint.com charges $10 for an add in their “Buy text links” folder.

Conclusion:

In closing, Forums are great ways to have fun and earn a little money at the same time online. You need to learn a lot before jumping head first into the industry. Make sure your forum is not too general. Make it related to a topic you know a lot about. Also check out the Forum made just for forum owners at: Admin Zone Forums