Many people who spend a lot of time surfing the internet are lonely in real life. In their search for convivial company, they join forums to make new friends, meet old ones, read about what others have to say and put in their two-cents’ worth. A popular forum with thousands of users online has a lot of potential as a revenue-generating medium. You can start your own forum to use this method of making money online.
The first thing you need is a domain name. You can register a domain name for as little as ten dollars. That is the easy part. The part that makes the brain cells run around in a frenzy is what name to register for your domain. The simplest solution is to use your own name if your name is not already being used by another website.
Is it really necessary to put a lot of time and effort into choosing a domain name? Look at it this way. Your domain name is your cyber brainchild. Just as you would spend time and effort to carefully choose a name for your child in real life, so should you do the same with your domain. There is also a crucial difference here. Whatever you name your child, you are not planning on selling your child. In the case of a domain name, it has market value if it is chosen with marketing in mind.
The next thing is to decide what software to use for your forum. Here your decision can be based on safety in numbers. Said safety not as in ‘if I chose wrongly, so did so many people’ but as in ‘if I need help, there are so many people I can ask’. Software operates in dynamic environments. Things are changing all the time. So there will be bugs. This is a fact of cyber life. Instead of looking for a bug-free program, look for one that has an active and helpful community. When you need help, as you surely will, there will be others who can give you a hand. Strong community support wins hands-down when compared to paid support.
After you have registered a domain name and decided on what forum software to use, get a web host.
There is one thing you must remember. Always buy just what you need. When you are just starting, all you need is a shared web hosting. Don’t be tempted to buy a vps or, worse still, a dedicated server. Even if the price difference is very small, start with a shared web hosting. Using a vps as a web host involves more than just paying extra money. There are other management issues which will distract you from your main activity, which is to start a forum. If you buy a dedicated server when you haven’t even got experience in using shared web hosting, you will be so tied up with technical issues, that you won’t have any time or energy left to start your forum.
So, start with a shared web host. It’s like instant noodles. Get one and it’s ready for use in seconds.
Are you ready to start your forum now? Not quite, because that was just the warm-up. The real work begins from this point on. You need to fill your forum with two important things. One important thing is content and the other is user population. These two items are inter-related, somewhat like the chicken and the egg. You cannot get one without having the other. There is no profit in debating which comes first, so get both.
The content is easy to get. You can put it into the forum yourself. If you are not up to it, get someone to do it for you. If they won’t do it for free, pay them to do it. Put in a lot of content. Add many conversation-starters to get your users to begin posting responses. Some controversial topics would be useful to engage your users in debating the pros and cons.
Getting the users takes a little bit more work. Use your Twitter. Write in your Facebook. Don’t be timid about promoting your forum. Print name cards and fliers with your forum address. Put in some interesting content about your forum. Give them to all your friends. Distribute them to all the friends of your friends. Pass them out to everyone. The more, the merrier.
The growth in user population is an exponential curve. As more users join your forum, even more users will join in the fun at an even faster rate. You can also boost your rate of growth with a forum contest. Maybe an all-expenses-paid holiday for two to a Caribbean resort for the top forum poster of the month. That would certainly attract a lot of people to your forum.
Actually, the prize does not have to be money. You can reward the top poster with a custom title like, ‘The Green Wizard’. He can use this title until someone else becomes more prolific at forum posting. Perhaps if he wins three months in row, you can give him a new custom title like ‘The Blue Wizard’. Then the top poster of the year can be crowned ‘The Rainbow Wizard’. The point is to add fun to your forum. When your users enjoy posting in your forum, things will hum. The number of users online will grow. Then you can advance to the next level in running a forum.
The next thing to do is to make money from your forum. It’s very simple. You can sell advertising space. Advertising revenue can come from banner advertisements or stickies. Stickies are forums threads which are fixed at the top of a forum board to get more attention. All these will mean money in the bank for you.
That, in brief, is how to make money online by starting a forum.
