yes, you are correct. I think, It takes between 6 months - 1 years to have more active members, depending. If in case, some forums are drying with very few members and continue to decline, just use post exchanges type service?
yes, you are correct. I think, It takes between 6 months - 1 years to have more active members, depending. If in case, some forums are drying with very few members and continue to decline, just use post exchanges type service?
Post exchanges might work for more mainstream subjects (gaming, technology, general forums, etc) because the subjects are well known, but for vaguer subjects you're not as likely to get posts that are pertinent to your subject.
Not to mention that due to no vested interest in your community most post exchange posters don't really put much effort into what they post or to actually drive along conversations. It is better to work on quality content and to pull in members than to waste time with most post exchanges.
DigitalPoint is currently throwing an error for me. So can't check the thread. But if I'm reading it right, does DP 'really' need 8 servers each with 32 CPU cores, 256 GB RAM?
I'm wondering whether it's the total number of posts/threads or simultaneous online users that requires that kind of setup?
DigitalPoint is currently throwing an error for me. So can't check the thread. But if I'm reading it right, does DP 'really' need 8 servers each with 32 CPU cores, 256 GB RAM?
I'm wondering whether it's the total number of posts/threads or simultaneous online users that requires that kind of setup?
People only value what they pay for. Forums are good but you also need PAID content. Membership sites are a good example, people come for the content but they stay for the community. There really is no difference between a forum and a CMS, it's all content just presented differently.
You need to re-frame your site. It's not just a forum, it's a private community with premium content. Calling it just a forum cheapens it. You're a special "club" of people.
DigitalPoint is currently throwing an error for me. So can't check the thread. But if I'm reading it right, does DP 'really' need 8 servers each with 32 CPU cores, 256 GB RAM?
None of the forum really... We also have some fairly big things running on the same cluster.
These are the 3 big resource hogs:
As serving platform that is serving up ads for every page view of sites using it. https://advertising.digitalpoint.com/
Geotargeting and logging to database the geographical location of every visitor on every page view of every site using this tool (there are probably about 250,000 sites using it): https://tools.digitalpoint.com/geovisitors
The world's largest search historical search engine position tracker (used by about 100,000 users): https://tools.digitalpoint.com/tracker
It took 4 years to get this "hobby" to the point where it would break even, now I clear $1-2K annually after expenses. I started my first forum (still around) 61 months ago.
I've never been able to get much out of Amazon except towards Christmas.
InfoLinks helps the bottom line a bit but if you introduce it into a forum it will ruffle a few feathers. Sometimes it's astonishing how people who don't pay the bills think they own the place.
AdSense is the best deal out there, but it's harder to get accepted now than it it used to be.
The key is content. An "ideal" forum has content that will attract members through search engines, and those members in turn will create more content to fuel the engines.
My best moneymaker generates traffic through search engines. There are few members, and very few active members who don't generate any real content. It's mostly myself blogging + Google traffic.
My #2 forum has several hundred members, including a hardcore group that's there every day, and they create much of the content.
#3 has a lot of passive members who drop in & post when they need something. Most traffic is from Google.
Most of my other forums are created for special purposes/niches and I don't expect them ever to to be very popular.I probably wouldn't have the time to deal with it if they were. And there were a couple non-starters than I never bothered to migrate from vBulletin.