Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello, I don`t know much about anything...but I`ve thought about purchasing a small forums type community before, and I came up with the same question.  What`s the point of having it if it doesn`t make any money.  I came up with trying to sell real products to your members.  I don`t know how well received it would be, but maybe you could throw a spin on it you know?  Like don`t throw it in their faces, but make it known on the site that you are now offering products.  Or "We here at Egyptian Table-Top forums support the following products" or something like that and just make sure that you`re selling those products.  That`s what I was thinking anyway.

 

-Joe3001

i have seen many forums as a support to the main website.  so in other words the forums themselves might not earn revenues but they earn the traffic which they direct to the main website.  the main website in turn monetizes the traffic.  that said, all the suggestions above are great.  i believe a forum is best used in conjuction with a website simply because of quality of content/SEO purposes.  a successful website can instantly boost a new forum but i dont think it works exactly as effective when done the other way.  that said, i believe a stand alone forum is also much more difficult to get "up the ranks".  try to use your forum as much as possible to direct visitors to your monetizing sources such as sales pages, downloadable products, free  ebooks with affiliate links etc.

 

good luck