Forums are becoming more and more popular every day. With software that makes forum construction possible with nearly no work, it’s no wonder why there are so many forums out there. Unfortunately, most of the novices installing forums have no idea what they are getting themselves into; they simply think that if you build it, guests will come. If you happen to be one of those novices with a full wallet, you’ll want to pay attention to these must-have investments:



1: vBulletin

vBulletin has rapidly become the most popular and the best bulletin board software there is. vBulletin is insurmountable in professionalism, customization and features, so having a vB license is essential for most forums. Unfortunately, the $160 license is hard to earn for some webmasters. If you’re one of them, you might want to stick with SMF (www.simplemachines.com) or MyBB (www.mybboard.com) for now.



2: A Custom Skin

One thing many administrators overlook is the design of their forum. Either they will buy a cheap skin that has been used on a thousand other forums, use a free skin with even less quality, or just stick with the default theme completely. A truly successful forum needs to have a unique and stylish skin of its own. Based on the quality of the skin and prestige of its creator, a good custom skin can cost from $100 to $500.



3: Modifications

Even with the best bulletin board software and a wonderful skin, your forum will have a difficult time standing out in the Internet. Various modifications will give your forum a boost in features, revenue, or even your search engine rank. Prices obviously differ based on the amount of modifications you have, but the most essential of these, vBSEO, runs for $149.



4: Paid Posters/Content

In order to get a community kicked off the ground, you’ll need to fill your forum up with lots of threads, posts, and members. Since some administrators can’t or are simply too lazy to do this grunt work themselves, they hire paid posters. You can usually get about $0.15 per post, and since the average board needs a little over 200 posts to get off the ground, you should invest about $50 in paid posting. If it’s relevant, you should also add some good content articles to your website. Five quality articles would cost a little over $50.



5: Contest

A contest is essential to get your first wave of traffic in at your forum. Be sure to host contests that last for a long duration of time and involve a decent prize. After you set the contest up, be sure to promote it with advertisements and posts on other forums. Remember: The bigger the prize, the better the activity.



6: Advertisements

This is an area that administrators really need to stress on. The best way to advertise is to place various ads on the same websites for the period of about 8-10 months. By exposing your ads on two or three popular websites over a long period of time, that website’s regular visitors will become used to seeing your site. This gives your website (possibly false, which is still good for you) sense of popularity, which will help to recruit members. Just be sure to remember to keep your ads on a popular site (forums work wonderfully, as you can easy see how much activity they have) that is related to your site. Also be sure to remember not to be discouraged if advertising doesn’t work so well at first. As mentioned earlier, members need time to get used to your website before they click your link and register. Advertisements can cost various amounts of money depending on the popularity of the site you plan to place your ads. An average monthly cost for a “good” advertising website is about $20 a month, which means that you should be prepared to invest around $250-$300 in advertising for your first 8-10 months.



7: Conclusion

So, how much will it cost to open your forum? In all truth, it can cost you absolutely nothing. Some forums have been quite successful by running on free forum software with limited or no advertising whatsoever. What really counts is your devotion and activity to your forums, so throwing money at the problem won’t necessarily give your board 10,000 members. However, if you’re looking to start up a forum with plenty of room for success, you should probably be ready to pay around $1,000 in the first year.






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