Anyone still build forums?
 

That topic about the sale of warrior forum got me thinking. Back in the day, it seemed like forums were the TGPs of mainstream, before everyone had their own blogs and before Facebook and Twitter ruled social networking.

Forums used to be the the king but now it's almost like a after thought. You have the big ones in various niches but do they still attract surfers like they used to? I know GFY has taken a hit as have most other adult forums, but I don't think that's due to other social media but more so to the down turn in adult.

I've always had a idea floating in the back of my head about building a "local" specific niche site and selling advertising to local businesses. Having a active forum community would make the advertising more valuable, so I'm wondering do people still sign up to forums or is it more a thing of the past?

Sure people sign up to forums but it needs to be really popular and really on topic for what the surfer is looking for.

Building a new forum is hard work. Paying those "services" to populate your forum is a waste of time. At the end of the day I ended up seeking out decent forums and buying out the owners.

I think no one is in business here anymore.. You start a I hate Obama topic or I love Obama topic and you get at least 2 pages. Start a biz related topic and you get 1 reply. :error


edit.. heh 2 replys

Yea I've built them in the past and sold them. I'd never use a service for posts because they always do crap posts and usually have no clue about the specific niches.

I'm building a mainstream forum in a very isolated type of "niche". Anyone have any basic tips for building users successfully? I've never leaned towards doing biz with cheap posters, fiverr type bs, I want to build a quality board.

Thanks for any tips, info, help :)

I've got a local type site I'm doing now, and have been back and forth on the forum part.
I had a decent one back in the late 90's early 2000's and have a decent idea how to position it, just not sure if the userbase is there with FB, twitter, etc..

I like the idea personally, but it's tough to get enough users to make one active

Using a bunch of alts that have different paysite banners in their sigs, copy and past some of the posts from here and fabricate your own political arguments. You could even parody the characters - ZeroClicks, **********ss, Vendildo, Roachfart, etc.

I tried many times to start a forum,but i think best way to do that to have a friend/friends which are capable to discuss about forum topic.Or you could try with fake nicks,but that is kind a tedious job.Before,one of advices was to populate forum with articles,so i did that by copying free articles from ezinearticles,but i gave up finaly and deleted everything(and i was even getting some se traffic).And another thing which you can do,to write high quality articles/posts,but for that blog is maybe a better form.

"like a after thought"
"always had a idea"
"Having a active forum community"
....Crocket man, lets begin with these comments right here hehehehehe :helpme