Hey guys,

Im thinking of makeing at least one forum and possibly a blog, what im wondering is exactly what it takes to do this.

My intrests in doing this will be to direct some traffic to my sales sites (currently a site where i offer services and an ebay store), as well as having a large audience for ads like adsense and banners to generate some revenue.

Id definatly want to have my own domain name, and would not be intresting in being on some subdomain of another site. Possibly even have my own host.

Whats it take to put together a forum? Are there any good resources for people intrested in making one? Any websites that offer free templates/design spaces that you can export out to your own host?

Thanks

I've always heard the best way to jumpstart a forum to life is have a large group of friends, associates, etc talk on there...

Say you have a chess club.. make a forum about the chess club, and give those members a place to chat--- this will drive traffic, articles, etc...

do this on top of naturaly promotion, through statistically finding the webs best sites to submit to (high traffic, quality, reach, popularity ratings) as well as placing links in your sig, and in blog comment space.. you'll have 100 uniques per day no problem.


It's the return rate you need to consider... most money is made on the comeback.. if you reach 1000 people but they only goto your site once, thats worthless.. Reach 10 that go there daily, you'll outweigh the 1000 in a very short period of time, as well as establish credibility, pagerank, etc.

Im thinking of makeing at least one forum and possibly a blog, what im wondering is exactly what it takes to do this.

A huge amount of time plus an enormous amount of commitment.

My intrests in doing this will be to direct some traffic to my sales sites

Then you will very soon get disillusioned with the time and effort it takes build the community that a forum needs.

Whats it take to put together a forum? Are there any good resources for people intrested in making one? Any websites that offer free templates/design spaces that you can export out to your own host?

This bit is very very simple, buy some hosting, register a domain, download a forum script, upload to the host, run the install. Then you can play with templates.
After this the hard work for very little return starts.

Forums do NOT build you a brand, and they do not drive sales in the way you are imagining.


My advice would be to build a website where you can post news, tips and advice and promote your products. Just like a "real" catalogue site, only without the payment gateway initially. (You can add that later when you get thoroughly p***ed off with the Ebay extortion system ).
A "blogging" script can do this very easily.
Then you can start the real work of promoting and marketing.


And NO you DO NOT have to ;
write "articles" and then give them away to all and sundry,
"submit to social networking sites",
link exchange with every crappy blog in existence,
etc etc!

http://www.phpbb.com/

Taught myself a year or so ago in under an hour.

Makes a forum, takes less then seconds. But to make it in order to make it famous enough, is a big problem. Communities arent easi to build

I think if you want to promote our products/services. Would be the best if you make a blog and post tips, reviews or whatever related to your business.

Just my opinion

i agree with michiganannd — start with a standalone blog, and when people start posting comments (an indicator that people are interested in topic) than you can start a forum. also, forum's success, unlike many other sites, depend on returning visitors, and wich also mean inefficiancy with ppc ads. but if you are looking to build it as a marketing tool to support online business - its totally worth it.

check out forumer.com, they do the programing for you and they have an awesome administration panel. The only thing they lack it server up time. there only at like 90%, which is really bad.