[Frenchiexno1]

Hi I'm tempted to say I am no longer a newbie but I guess I still am. I've been buying domain names now for about 6months and have been setting up sites wih content on them and google adsense. I'm making a little bit of money out of this but its quite time consuming writing the content so I got on to the idea of forums.

Anyway not as hard to set one up as I thought and I went live with my first one ever a few days ago. I wanted to know if anyone here buys forum orientated domain names and makes much money out of them, and how hard it is to get a new forum established.

Seems like a great plan if other people are writing content for you on your site and then you watch the money come in from a few carefully placed ads.....
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/domain-newbies/450928-anybody-here-making-money-out-forum.html

But hell its never that simple is it!!

[nielsencl]

Generally, no it's not. Still what you are doing is not a bad idea at all. I can tell you what I know about forums, since I started one for a client and moderate on two others.

There are two main things that are hard about forums:

1) Starting them. If you don't have an active forum with content, people are not going to join and post. If people don't join and post you aren't going to have content. So what do you do? The answer is either to get some friends to help you, create some accounts and start posting as different people, or hire a service like Forumelves.com(Update: I have just been informed that Forum Elves seems to have gone out of buisness, but I know there are others that can be used).
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=450928

You need to market and promote it just like any other site, and many forum owners have posting contests, but the quality of the posts can suffer if you don't have strict rules about what people can post. Sometimes you can ask people to donate the prizes since they will get the exposure for their business, or you may have things like scripts, domain names, or services that you can give away for the contests.

2) Keeping them going. You can't just put up a forum, get it started and then sit back and relax generally. The things that need attention are spammers, clueless new users, trolls, and people that just break any rules you have. Depending on what forum software you use, hackers may also be a problem that can deface your forum or delete everything, so backups are crucial.

As your forum gets going you will notice some members are better than others. They help people a lot, answer questions, and even do some research to help others. They may also post long detailed replies to what people ask. :-) When you see these people, you should talk to them about becoming a moderator on your forum. This will give you help in policing the site and answering questions.

Generally you don't have to pay your moderators, because they are already doing most of what you want because they enjoy your forum and helping others. By giving them the power to edit and delete posts and users, you are rewarding their interest by letting them maintain the standards of your site, which they clearly already enjoy.

But you will also want to try and make sure they feel appreciated, or they may lose interest after a time. If your forum is making some money, find ways to share some of that with them either as cash or things like domain names if they are interested in that. Gift cards can work too.

The one thing you have to be careful of is that your moderators don't abuse their power and upset your members. Some times they start acting like they are the owner and get so picky that they can bother others.

One thing that I am not sure about is how to best monetize a forum. If adsense doesn't seem to work, I would experiment with ad styles and placements, but finding a system like Linkworth's LinkWords that turns keywords into links that display ads might be a better option.

[GeoOwners]

Is anybody here making money out of forum domain names?

namepros.com

[ballisticjoe]

Excellent post nielsencl.


Repped+

[DomainOgre]

Rep added from me as well. Everybody starting a forum should read that.

The only thing I noticed out of place is that it appears that Forumelves.com has gone out of business.

[nielsencl]

Thanks for the kind words...! :-)

Too bad about Forum Elves. I have updated my post. Someone should contact the owner about buying their domain/site/business...

[Rob J]

It's really hard to start a forum, as niels said you're in a catch 22, until people join and start posting you've got a dead forum, and nobody wants to join a dead forum to post.

I tack a forum onto almost every site I develop, whether it makes sense to for that site or not. I also allow posting without registering (but you need a good captch or you'll end up with nothing but a spam board) and then I pretty much forget about it. Usually nothing comes of them, but once in awhile one takes off.

[Frenchiexno1]

Thanks for this guys - some excellent information for me to go on! 1 week on and I have 10 members, but early days.....the great thing about a forum is that I enjoy them! Plus the geek in me enjoys the stats and admin side of it. I used a SMF Forum and Im really surprised how easy it was to setup - once it is a little more established I'll look at monetising it.

I've tried message boards before and they got spammed to death, but I like the idea of tagging more forums on to my domains......

Looks like my approach just evolved a little more

[RSK2000]

Forums are easy to set up but most people who set up forums do not have making money as their goal. So they are unlikely to pay top prices for forum domain names. Still, there is money to be made from the best forum domains -especially 'commercial keyword' + forum/ talk type names.

I wrote an article about forum domain names a while ago on my domain name blog which may help. Forum domains - some background for domainers