by: Rosalind Gardner
Riches, fame, glory... OK, that's perhaps exaggerating somewhat, but running a successful forum can certainly make you very popular and bulk out the wallet considerably.
Here are the ten best reasons to start your own discussion forum:
Do you love to garden, do wood-working or build model airplanes? Visit a forum on any niche topic and you'll meet others who are also interested in that topic.
Help others by sharing your knowledge and learn from those with new and different experience.
Repeated posting is a great way to get your name out there.
Become known as an 'expert' by providing thoughtful answers and suggestions to questions posed on the forum.
As you become more widely known as an expert, your name and URL will be mentioned elsewhere on the web, which then brings more visitors to your site.
More visitors means better page rankings at Google and higher search engine listings at all the major search engines - which in turn means MORE traffic still!
Any product or service sold generates a set of commonly asked questions. Post answers on your forum and then send people directly to the specific answer on your site. (Having them go to your site will also help boost your page rank and bring in still MORE visitors!)
Regular forum participants will answer questions that others have posted, thereby reducing your workload.
Need new ideas for products? Post your own questions to find out what your forum visitors most want and need - then use that information to:
Display ads for products related to your forum visitors' interests at the top and bottom of every page. Ads can be for your own products or for merchants with whom you are affiliated. Post new messages when you have a new product that your visitors will be interested in.
Those are just the obvious reasons - I'm sure you'll discover many more benefits when you become master of your own forum.