other ideas on maintaining a forum

[wesley]

One of the things I have noticed recently is forums that appeared to be active then died. I guess there could be a lot of reasons for that - subject no longer pertinent, item is no longer in the news, forum not maintained.

But I was also thinking (because I want to start my own forum soon) that people seem to start off well getting some users and possibly paid posters. But when that is over, some forums die because they have not had the chance to be fully indexed yet and received its own set of users.

It might helpful to forum owners to budget a little money to keep the forum going even after the launch. That way the forum does not look like it died and hopefully the initial work will not have been for nothing.

Just brainstorming here

[AffiliateSeeking]

I think the problem is that some people start forums and don't realise how much work is really involved or they think that they can earn a great deal of money and find out that it's not as easy earning from forums as they first thought.

Either that or they find that their forums needs a whole deal of advertising and link building to get good listings in the Search Engines and they haven't got the time as they first thought they had or don't quite know how to do it.

Another thing is that they start of with a small budget and find out that it costs much more than what they first thought when it comes to getting a forums up and running properly.

[wesley]

Those are good points, too. I think people see the big forums making money and think "oh that is easy - let me do it"

They fail to understand that the big forums have been around for a long time and probably operated at a loss in the beginning.

Also, the other crucial point is the loyalty of the community. Just because someone starts a forum doesn't mean users are going to leave the community in which they have participated for years to run to the new forum.

[India forum]

Nice points, To maintain a forum you should try to tell your friends about your forum, after making it popular i think you can easily get 20 - 50 posts per day in your forum, and minimum 10 posts per day is ok for a beginning forum, after a year or 6 months you can get like 5 - 12 members per day like me.

Jay

[exculiber]

Maintaining a forum is not a one man job. It is a team effort with common interest and dedication. I think for a forum to prosper, forum administrators should ensure good contents and active participation of members.

[joshua]

It all depends on the forum niche and the users it attracts.In the beginning there need to be things happening on the forums such as free stuffs and interesting threads.In this way people will come again.

[Essence]

From what I see forums only when the owners don't update content for their members. I know that as soon as a site owner stops posting and advertising then I leave.