A few past days I was researching websites and online communities hungry for the algorithm how to make a forum successful on the Internet.

As a result, I have made a sort of program – list of steps that are likely to increase my chances to succeed with my forum ventures.

I will publish the entire list. As I use phpBB for forum software some steps are applicable to this software, but I am sure that they can be transferred to any other forum software.

The most important step is CONCEPT. How are you planning to be different from your competitors, what content or services to offer, how to make your users your forum addicts. All additional steps are supplemental if you have a great concept (wish I had at the moment) – they will be a kinf of natural continuation of your key ideas.

0. How to build a forum from scratch:

plan it – main topic,

the concept (users, compretitors, your goals, give us a reason to come and participate),

build the project (code, design, mods, content, backups!),

launch

promote

properly run it

1. Setup:

- select a skin;
- use mod_rewrite;
- page “title” meta tag = post title;
- assign forum boards (start small);
- run through the entire admin panel & make the adjustments (posts allowed to registered users, etc);
- add AdSense & CPM & integrate;
- feed recent posts to the website pages;
- don’t display or remove the memberlist.php;
- check the forum user end (registration, settings, talk, PM, sig, etc);
- monthly back-ups;
- enable Visual Confirmation from Configuration in Admin Panel;
- disallow HTML, smilies & graphic sig files;
- edit overall_footer to delete the version #;
- set of rules

Hacks – depending on your forum topic; in my case I need: attachmnets, user started threads, similar threads, community newsletter, user reputation, refer a friend, chat room. Need a list of available hacks? Check it here

Must-be sections (start with a few, increase with time if required)

Administration & updates, news and announcements

‘Specialized’ categories

Off topic

Hidden administrative area

Key elements:

Setting Up and Launching a Bulletin Board Community

Choosing and Managing Your Team

Managing Community Issues

Servers – Hosting – Software Choices

Site Security

Increasing Traffic – Attracting Members

Revenue Sources – Advertising Methods

Forum Organization and Layout

Community Review

Professional forum reviewers check (TAZ algo) – have a look at your forum as a stranger:

First Impressions
Look: Guest’s Outlook, Logos and Banners, Quantity of Forums, Advertisements, Color scheme, Themes and Styles; Rules, FAQ, and Privacy Policy; Forum Staff/Contact Points, Points of Registration; Page and Image Sizes; Favicon, Buttons, and Other Graphics
Feel: Sense of Community; Postcount and Quality; Participation Overview; Quantity and Activity of Staff; Contests, Games, and Diversions
Overall Impressions

Summary of Recommended Changes

2. Promotion & Monetization:

- use adsense heatmap for forums;
- ad rotating script;
- run weekly or monthly contests for prizes (1^st to make 100 posts, refer most new members, more samples are posted below);
- revenue sharing with hack;
- hire forum posters (ex. postonmyforum.com);
- PPC;
- add your community to forum directories. Nice list is here
- seeding;
- immediate response (mods 24/ 7);
- reward your superusers (make them mods, member of the month, etc);
- link development; follow news;
- exchange posts with other admins (direct contacts, say 5 threads & 15 replies);
- mention your forum in the signature on other forums;
- post questions, not news feeds;
- plan to post, say, 5 new threads daily (each of office staff)

Contests are considered to be one of the most efficient ways to promote your forums. Samples of contest ideas: offer 2 months free advertising on your site for the first 10 registered users, the first 3 registered members with the highest post account once your community reaches 100 members will get 6 months text link advertisement, the first 25 registered members to reach a post count of 30 will receive 1 month free banner advertisement on all forum pages. Spend 300 bucks to have 600 site-branded beer bottle openers made. Run a contest called “Mega Posts” and the first 5 people to reach 500 posts wins a t-shirt. Referral contest work well (check vBulletin hack). If any of your site has “premium” or “pay” content, an idea would be for the leading referrer overall to maintain free membership, and for each month, the member with the most active and legit referrals for a month could get a determined amount of time of free membership to the premium areas. Give away DVD’s of reality shows infrequently. The members like them. Give them an Amazon gift certificate for the amount of the DVD, so they can buy whatever they want. Ask your sponsors if they were interested in giving away anything.

3. Forum Management:

Forum content: news, articles, interviews, images, surveys, games, quizzes, downloads, tutotrials, polls, debates, reviews

Moderators forum: to bond a mini-community

Community awards, member of the month, active news and announcement section, staff structure, t-shirts

Constant e-mail communication: your post featured, offer accepted, newsletter, etc

Community newsletter – learn here (Seth Godin says those who build e-mail and feed lists will succeed in the long run)

Feature top members, forum posters, photographers, reviewers.

Reply to all suggestion and feedback.

Participation: no one-post threads

Why people contribute their content? Money (contests, prizes, giveaways), recognition (graphics, top poster list, points system), advancement (ranking system, staff), self-worth

Have a forum? Make it a community: target your audience and understand it; pick your staff carefully (must be members, knowledgeable about the topic, mature); be unique (topic, design, features); give users a way to idenity (added to CP and avatars host photos, their blogs, subdomain, feel home on your site); get users addicted; reward good members (with graphics); get out of the forum (meet in real life); special e-mail invitations, a forum newlsletter.

Member stereotypes: clueless newbie; 1337 chat speaker; post happy spammer; snakster (=always unhappy); role player (a few id’s, bad intentions); etelist regular; line skirter

How to build good staff: keep in mind the forum goal; have a list of expectations; be familiar with your members; trial period; staff must work well together

Forum moderation training kits:

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12527

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/81.htm

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6783

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/213.htm

Moderator’s manual:

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=105&d=1088338022

Summary: This is a program that hopefully will give me a clue how to run successful web forums. As I have mentioned in some previous posts at this time I consider forums and social websites as two most significant alternate ways (to traditional search engines) to get traffic to your websites.

It is hard for me to imagine that there are many websites that rely on natural traffic only and do not get into trouble now and then when there are some Google changes. I primarily talk about new websites. I am quite new to this game – just over one year. All my projects have poor rankings in the search engines. The one that is doing fine and gets a relatively good amount of traffic from Google operates in some low competitive niche with low earnings.

So I have a clear target to make my projects profitable while they can hardly compete for search engine rankings with the websites that were started 5-7 years back. I see the solution in this way – as I can’t get enough traffic from search engines I should get it from other sources (yes, I consider a project successful and profitable if it gets enough visitors. For me, traffic = revenue).

[tags]online communities, forums, web forums, traffic, link bait, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, archive.org, adsense, adwords, ppc, text-link-ads, links buying, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]

I have already discussed the value of social networking websites for getting links to your online projects. I also mentioned other benefits you get using this type of websites while promoting your own:

a. Traffic (it does not turn into cash at a normal rate, but you can monetize it with CPM banners)
b. Branding (your website has a good chance to get noticed)
c. One way links (natural – most valuable links that will result in a better search engine visibility of your website)

My recent experiments prove that one should spend more time to explore these social websites and opportunities they provide for online entrepreneurs. I have realized that I can get traffic, good traffic from other sources besides search engines where it is next to impossible to rank high for popular keywords if your website is new (under 2 years).

What is a social website? It is a public website where its members save their bookmarks that are (as a rule) accessible to other members. Members use keywords to tag their submissions. Other members use tags to search for the information they are interested in.

In fact, it is a new approach of organizing information that is completely different from traditional search engines (Google, Yahoo!, etc). The good news is that the social websites gain their popularity and are likely to shortly compete with Google and other SE in traffic. It makes us less dependent on Google updates and fads.

Three key elements of social websites:

- members
- tags
- URL’s

You should focus on these three elements while seeking ways to succeed with this new source of traffic.

There are new social websites that come online practically on a monthly basis. They are not equal and one can’t keep track of every new service. And I think there is no reason for that. I use the below social websites that are most popular at the present time:

- www.onlywire.com – in fact it is a service that allows you to submit your new entries in seconds to an entire number of social websites (Backflip, Blinklist, Blogmemes, del.icio.us, Feedmelinks, Furl, Linkroll, Looklater, ma.gnolia, Maple, Markaboo, Rawsugar, Shadows, Simpy, Wink). To start with, you need to open an account with every service. Later on you will be able to make submissions to all services via one interface – www.onlywire.com

- www.digg.com

- www.stumbleupon.com

- www.netscape.com

- www.shoutwire.com

- www.reddit.com

- www.coolsiteoftheday.com

There are popular sites that are specialized in particular industries (for instance, www.slashdot.org or www.fark.com). I do nt mention www.myspace.com as I have not so far explored the service to the level I would like it. I have an account and friends, but no successful promotions.

Summary: It takes me in total 10-15 minutes to add my new articles or posts to every service. The result is not always the same and as expected, but I know that I will get a few hundred visitors each day thanks to these websites solely. Plus some possible links, plus branding aspect. It is definitely worth my 10-15 minutes.

These are my first steps with social bookmarking websites and I think that my best posts are still to come. It is not a secret that you can expect 30,000-50,000 visitors per day if you really make it big with these websites. In that case you should be prepared to properly handle that volume of traffic; otherwise the website will go down.

[tags]social websites, traffic, link bait, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, archive.org, adsense, adwords, ppc, text-link-ads, links buying, links selling, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]

How can you get traffic in addition to search engines and social websites traffic? I talk about big traffic, not a few visitors that you get from your website directory submissions or forum signatures.

Well, you can do it with your community – a database of dedicated users that will come to their favorite website for news, communication and more neglecting the positions of your website in search engines. You do not have to care about search engine updates anymore.

In addition to traffic the loyal visitors will generate you free content that will result in bringing you more visitors through search engines. The value of good communities is great

But the question is how to create these communities from zero? There are a few types of websites where users generate content:

- forums (most popular type)
- social websites (recent buzz on the Internet)
- image hosting
- etc

In this post I would like to talk about forums – the traditional way to generate users’ content and the cheapest one – it costs nothing to install phpBB forum on your website compared to developing a social website similar to www.digg.com

What issues should you be prepared to deal with if you are going to start your first forum? If you check the most authoritative web resource on this topic TheAdminZone you will see the tasks that are in store for you:

Set Up and Launch
Discussions about Planning an Online Community – Privacy Policies – Terms of Service – Targeting Niche – Demographics.

Community Management
Managing Members and Staff – Building Community Spirit.

Servers and Hosting
Shared, Virtual, and Dedicated Hosting Options.

Search Engine Optimization
SEO Makes Your Forums Irresistable To Spiders! Techniques and Tips For vBulletin, IPB, and phpBB. Increase Your Forum’s Search Engine Rankings.

Increasing Traffic
Promotional Techniques To Fill Up Those Member Lists.

Advertising Methods
Offsetting the Cost of Maintaining Your Site with Affiliate Programs, eCommerce, Subscriptions, Donations, Advertising, and Targeted Sponsorships – Online Payment Options

Forum Organization
How To Arrange Your Forums For Best Effect.

Graphics Customization
Advice & Tutorials for forum styles. Buttons, smilies, avatar swaps. (Add forum software brand to the title of your thread)

Recently I have started 4 forums. Considering my experience short of successful running online communities I have to learn much and fast. At the moment I try to find a working algorithm to apply to all my forums, but I have a gut feeling that there is no unique solution for every community as they are all in different niches.

As I go deeper into the mechanism of forum operation I start to look at my websites with the eyes of a visitor and see more and more things to improve (then I drop my forum research and do some work at the websites).

I have chosen free phpBB software for my websites though most ‘experienced’ people recommend vBulletin. I have installed several and plan to add a few more mods (attachment, reputation, etc)

Well, what resources are likely to help you with your endeavors to start, manage and promote your online communities?

In addition to TheAdminZone (where you can also find interviews with successful forum owners) I would recommend AdminFusion (I guess Lee Dodd – a well known ‘forum specialist’ – is the owner of this one)

And spend a portion of your valuable time studying these invaluable pieces of wisdom:

Set-up & Launch Resources

Community Management Resources

Increasing Traffic Resources

The best tips to get your forum started

Advertising Method Resources

Summary: Yes, it takes time to explore the resources I refer to in this post. It will take time to implement most steps on your forums to achieve any good result. It will be hard to compete with a lot of other forums in your niche – some innovating ideas would help with that.

But if and when you and I succeed we will enjoy an automatic online property that will take minimum time and efforts (compared to running a blog or a content website) to run.

[tags]user generated content, forums, free, phpbb, vbulletin, link bait, social bookmarking, web 2.0, domain names, archive.org, adsense, adwords, ppc, text-link-ads, links buying, links selling, myspace, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogs, content generation, ebay, google, make money online, work from home, home based job, wikipedia, del.icio.us, technorati, bloglines, duplicate content, links, earn your living online[/tags]