How to start and maintain a profitable online forum?

Starting an online forum is not a difficult task. Having a numerous active members is the most difficult part.

Online forum is not like blogs. You need not only to optimize it on search engines, but also need to stay active and monitor every activities on your forum.


Finding scrupulous, active moderators is relatively hard to find. Moderators should have broad knowledge about the topics, always online, open minded and is willing to share his/her knowledge on a particular topic. Moderators are thread starters, and they should have the ability to choose and maintain a very good topic that can be sticky.

After putting your forum online, there are numerous things to do in order to make your forum profitable.

Find moderators

As mentioned above, find a person who has broad knowledge on the topics of the forum whom is willing to share  knowledge and is very active online. Choose one whose field of expertise is inline with the forum's topic.

Assign task to moderators

Ask each moderators to create a thread according to their specialties, and if possible, give them title to make threads with. Threads should be unique and plagiarism shall be avoided at all times.

Advertise your forum

In order to obtain more members, advertise your forum in social networks and through word of mouth.

SEO

Optimize your forum in search engine rankings. A forum with a very high Search Enguine Ranking will likely to have more visitors, thus, more chance to have more active members.

Incorporate forum with Google Adsense and other advertising networks

A forum with no advertisement is more likely to have lesser revenue. Google adsense is the most reliable and is the most credible advertising network, though you can also apply to other networks in addition to google adsense. Ads from these networks will be the main source of your forum's revenue.

Avoid Robot Members

I personally met these spammers. They often join a forum and post irrelative posts and links. These posts may destroy the forum's credibility.

TIPS.............

While the forum has been started, there has no moderators and active members yet. Create atleast five dummy moderator accoutns and numerous dummy member accounts on which they create threads and posts and replies. While there's not much real account, play with this accounts.....