By Niall Roche
Have you ever wished you could attract
more people to your site, sell more products and make
a better income?
With millions of web sites competing
for people's attention it can be hard for potential
customers to find you. Starting an online community
may be just the answer you are looking for. There
are many advantages to having your own forum including:
1) Repeat visitors. Although it's great getting
first time visitors, people who visit on a regular
basis are more likely to buy from you because they
know and trust you. A message board will bring people
back to your site over and over. People come back
to check for replies to their questions and to read
new messages.
2) Selling advertising space. A busy message
board is a great place for advertisers to advertise.
Most message boards are divided into specific topics
which means targeted advertising. There are many ways
you can use and sell advertising space. You can ask
for bids at ebay, you can use an advertising agency
to handle advertising for you, use Google Adsense,
promote affiliate programs or your own products.
3) People will bring their friends. There is
nothing more effective then word of mouth advertising.
If your online community is lively and interesting
people will invite their friends along to join in
the discussions too.
Tips on starting your message
board:
- Your message board should focus on a specific topic
(for example cats)
- If it's a part of your web site, it should relate
to the content of the site.
- Divide your main forum into sub topics, for example
"grooming your cat", "cat health" etc.
- Start conversations yourself. Newcomers are more
likely to reply to a thread then to start one of their
own. Pretend you are hosting a party and it is your
job to make people feel welcome.
- In the beginning you may need to invite as many
of your friends to post as you can to help you get
things started.
- Hold contests for the most constructive posts every
month to encourage posting.
- Allow people to have signatures with the URL of
their web sites. A lot of people join discussions
for the sake of promoting their own sites. As long
as the advertising is subtle, let them.
How to go about starting your own message board
There are lots of excellent free message board scripts,
with the most popular ones being:
http://www.invisionboard.com/
http://www.phpbb.com/
http://www.yabbse.org/
They come with instruction on how to
install them on your server, or you can pay someone
a small fee and have it installed for you. Try not
to use remotely hosted free message boards as they
can add their own advertising and you won't have complete
control over your forum. It is well worth it to install
one on your own server if you can. Starting your own
community can be a rewarding and profitable experience
so get started today!
About the Author
Suzanne Roman runs
http://www.mom101.com Offering resources for moms
who work or want to work from home. Come and try the
personality quiz to see what home business would suit
you best or browse through the hundreds of articles
about starting and running a home business.
