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I don’t think that the single “con” you have listed is really a con. The only cost involved in having those experienced punters on your site bandwidth, and honestly, that’s pretty cheap when you compare it to the extra content and links.
Please add the following to your list:
Pro:
1. Builds stickiness and daily visitors. Much easier to gain traction in the marketplace with return traffic then having to constantly bring in new eyeballs.2. Punters are much more likely to support you and your sponsors if they view you as a friend and fellow community member rather then just a site they stop by for odds lines at.
Cons:
1. An enormous amount of work, supervision and up keep. Far more work then most people envision or realize if you have any real number of participants.2. Much higher stress levels. You are dealing with a lot of different personalities and not all of them are pleasant. Its a balancing act to maintain a lively enviroment without it becoming a hostile one.
Wow! These answers came lightning fast. Thanks Professor and Randy!
“2. Punters are much more likely to support you and your sponsors if they view you as a friend and fellow community member rather then just a site they stop by for odds lines at.”
I really like the above comment as it is one thing that I haven’t figured out!
Please keep posting your experiences/suggestions
@Professor 138159 wrote:
Please add the following to your list:
Pro:
1. Builds stickiness and daily visitors. Much easier to gain traction in the marketplace with return traffic then having to constantly bring in new eyeballs.2. Punters are much more likely to support you and your sponsors if they view you as a friend and fellow community member rather then just a site they stop by for odds lines at.
Cons:
1. An enormous amount of work, supervision and up keep. Far more work then most people envision or realize if you have any real number of participants.2. Much higher stress levels. You are dealing with a lot of different personalities and not all of them are pleasant. Its a balancing act to maintain a lively enviroment without it becoming a hostile one.
I agree with all of the above.
For most people it’s hard to populate the forum, and once it is, it’s hard to manage all the different personalities. They are not always going to get along and sometimes someone gets a bee in their bonnet and and you have the unpleasant task of deciding what to do about it. Sometimes it’s a lose/lose proposition when dealing with all these different people. One person or the other will be unhappy with you.
If you can handle the periodic stress that comes with management and the workload, I think it’s all good.
Yes, it’s hard to grow a large interesting forum but I think it’s worth to do it.
With the forum your site will live.@Professor 138159 wrote:
Please add the following to your list:
Pro:
1. Builds stickiness and daily visitors. Much easier to gain traction in the marketplace with return traffic then having to constantly bring in new eyeballs.2. Punters are much more likely to support you and your sponsors if they view you as a friend and fellow community member rather then just a site they stop by for odds lines at.
Cons:
1. An enormous amount of work, supervision and up keep. Far more work then most people envision or realize if you have any real number of participants.2. Much higher stress levels. You are dealing with a lot of different personalities and not all of them are pleasant. Its a balancing act to maintain a lively environment without it becoming a hostile one.
For your cons here.. even if you DONT have a lot of visitors, you’re in for some work.. you’re going to have to be very active in your forum.. to attract those visitors you’re going to want later! All without looking insane or desperate
.. Forum posters might work, but half the time they’re idiots and you quickly delete their posts embarrassed that they were ever up.. other times.. theyre great, and u wish u could keep them forever 
!I second the stickyness.. check out my join date.. man I’m stuck!
In general I think its a good idea if you want to have a site with loyal punters but it is a hell of a lot of work at least initially, once it reaches critical mass you can offload a lot of the work to more senior regular readers by appointing them as moderators.
In terms of google I’m not sure how much it helps as I suspect Google doesn’t value Forums as highly as for example well written articles.As with anything you’ll only really find out by giving it a go.
I would say go for it if you are just doing it as a hobby or you are going to hire people to run it.
If you are doing it to earn extra revenue then IMO its not really worth all the time you will have to spend on it. It takes a lot of work and time to grow a successful forum. I myself would rather spend that time setting up new websites that run themselves and try to free up more of my personal time.
Thanks for all your answers and opinions! I have decided that I will give it a go but not in the near future. First of all I will concentrate on writing content and getting backlinks and once traffic reaches a certain level I will use the forum to transform the site from a website to a portal/community. I totally agree with Zenta who said “once it reaches critical mass you can offload a lot of the work to more senior regular readers by appointing them as moderators …“
In the mean time you can capture leads. Then when your ready to launch your forum you can email your list to get a good start on the forum postings. You can also hire people on dp to post on your forum for about .10 per post but make sure your clear about what qualifies as a paid post or people will expect to get paid for garbage posts.
on the long run …. agree with Rob and LadyH,
lots of time involved.
ps.
paid by the Prof to say this lol
just kiddin’ ….
I think that’s a really good decision. I tried to add a forum to one of my newer sites, and all I ended up accomplishing was posting on 15 different accounts to myself all day lol.
Do your articles and links, get more members, capture emails, then when you have a large site with a lot of traffic, give the forum a go.
