How to make money from a forum

Starting a forum might be one of the greatest internet marketing techniques ever. Think of it, why do people need fora?

• To communicate
• To solve problems
• To talk to like minded people
• To chat about an obscure hobby

Those are your motives. If you make a forum based on those motives, then you can make a successful forum. No, it is not easy to make one, I assure you. It takes a lot of time and patience to build up a community. But the funny thing is, once you do make the community, you have a bunch of people ready to be marketed!

As a forum owner, you can send emails to all subscribed members. Do not spam them of course, but an email every 2 months or so, gently reminding them that the forum is there can keep them coming back. Having promotional threads is easy, and pushing products in the niche is a piece of cake because, well, the posters are interested in the niche…

There are three engines you can use for your forum.

• IpBoard
• SMF forum
• vBulletin

There are pros and cons to each of them. SMF is free, has lots of plugins, and just does the job for small forums. IpBoard is much more pretty and robust than SMF, has neat community features and better SEO.

But the real deal is vBulletin. It is the most powerful forum engine, fully customizable and with a huge support community plus third party plugins and themes. It costs some cash, but it is worth it.

In the end, it all comes down to you. But, it is best to start with a solid foundation, or you will regret in further down the road.

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Related posts:

1. How to kick-start a forum, Part 1