I recently asked a forum owner and friend of mine Jack to write a post on the pros and cons of starting a forum. Luckily he gladly took up the offer and here is the post, hope you enjoy it!

BTW: He is the owner of a a teen business forum you should check it out here

There are tons of forums out there, are there not? You can pretty much find a forum for every topic imaginable. So then why did you, or I in this case start a forum? I own TeenBusinessForum.com, a community where teen entrepreneurs can get resources, advice, and in the future coaching on starting and operating a business.

I didn’t start it however but did take it over. I still own it because I love the subject- entrepreneurship. Forum managers that started or is still currently managing one would also agree with that.

So alright. What are the positives about starting a forum?

Actually, there are many and I’m going to break them down into monetary and non-monetary. Here goes:

Non-monetary:

- Find like-minded people. Where else can you find people who are interested in the same subject as you? From experience, it’s very difficult. A forum really is a good way to do that.

- Build on your current knowledge of the topic. I knew something about entrepreneurship before. But after taking over the forum, I have learn a lot more. An example of that for me is figuring out how to market the forum, thereby learning about internet marketing in the process.

– Learn to manage. Really? Yes. Well, at some point, your community will outgrow you. At that point, you will have to find people who will be moderators. You’ll have to manage how they do their job because they will do things differently than you.

– Learn internet marketing. I thought I could skip this altogether and head straight to making the dollars. Nope. This is essential. It’s my belief now that marketing is something everyone has to learn. We either need to market our selves, our business, or in this case our forum. And there are many things you can do to market a forum- ads, contests, using Facebook and Twitter, posting on members’ and non-members’ blogs, etc.

Monetary:

- A forum is in itself a niche. It’s a great way to market a product, provided that one exists that you can promote. Once you figured out the demographics of your forum- age, location, gender, interests, likes and dislikes, you can better create a product to cater to them. The product can be an affiliate or it can be a better forum with paid premium features.

That’s great. What are the negatives of starting a forum? Glad you asked.

- Takes a long time to grow. Yup, that’s true. Even after you built a core, it still takes time.

- Requires a lot of personal commitment. If I was not into entrepreneurship, the forum would be dead. But because I am very passionate about being an entrepreneur, I can inject interesting discussions and provide reasonable advice. That makes a big difference. Make no mistake about it. I spend a lot of time online and offline promoting the forum. It takes real commitment to make a forum grow. So with that said, as long as I own TeenBusinessForum.com, it will continue to grow and stay true to its objective.

– There will be very quiet days on the forum. I notice that members are on a lot for a period of time and then off for a period of time. There will be days where everyone decide to not come on in the forum. You’ll be left wondering if the forum will die that day. That’s just how it is. There will be activity and non-activity. If you figure out how to solve this, please email me.

- A forum in general is not a good money-maker. If you want to make money online, please do not start a community, only to let it die months later. This makes it tougher for active communities to attract and retain members because they think it will die at some point. The forum manager should think of other ways to make money.

So that’s all for now. I look forward to seeing what else others come up with.

Jack Liu is an entrepreneur from the Washington DC area. His vision for TeenBusinessForum is promote and empower teen entrepreneurs to be next generation’s business leaders.

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