Is a forum on a blog worth it? | Bloggers Lair | Yakezie Forums

Kalyan, 

I'll be honest with you (as I always am) you need a MASSIVE site to support a forum.  It has to be large enough where you have tons of visitors daily that want to continue your ideas on their own.  If you don't have the visitors you can create but doesn't mean anyone will hang out there.

I don't think it's worth it for 99% of the blogs out there.  I think you have to have a site where you get a lot of traffic and a lot of comments per day.  Without that built in base it's going to be tough to get the kind of people in the forums needed to start and maintain discussions that will build momentum.

A forum is all about the people who take part.  If you have enough dedicated people then it can work.

But from what I've heard it is usually a lot of trouble and you have to be prepared to fight spam.

Doesn't mean you shouldn't try it if you think it fits your site.  You know your audience best.

Wow..got tons of suggestions and experiences from you wonderful people.. Hmmm.. I guess  I have to rethink now..

Actually, I thought the other way… I wanted to create a forum, invite and bring my FB friends onto it and make it an interactive discussion platform for them and thus divert traffic to my blog (which is my primary object at this moment as far as monetization is concerned)… Yes, I agree with all and to what you have just said..

I have a strong group of active FB friends who (I hope) may accept my invitation and join my forum and out of them, I plan to make a few potential visitors for my blog.. the topics I cover in my blog (right from dating to parenting,, from fashion to relationships,..health to traveling), I guess the young guns may be enticed into it  provided proper marketing is done..

As of now, I thought of making my forum completely integrable with FB and other popular social media so that they can just keep logged into my forum when they are logged into their social networking sites such as FB…. all promotions and campaign will be done on social media and via word of mouth.. sometimes push them into the forum and then show them that the forum can be to their liking too if they wish to share something or discuss something.. I will start viral marketing for..will join popular forum in my niches.. (boy,, I saw huge traffic on sexforums, psychology forums, relationship forums) and market for my forum & try to direct some traffic to my forum ( both directly and indirectly)…

But your comments have forced me to rethink on it.. Shall I give it a try and share what I get or lose from this (impossible/very difficult prospect)? what do you say? your comments will really help and motivate me..else, I will drop this idea……

Hank Coleman said:

I messed around with a forum on another non-PF site that I own earlier this year. I made the mistake of doing it on a shared hosting account. The DB quickly got too huge and overwhelmed the system. May want to consider separate servers for sites with Forums if you are not already. Just food for thought.

Oh really!! New to me.. Did not look into this.. mine is also on shared hosting and thought of having a forum on a sharing hosting.. but if you say, it will overwhelm my DB, then I better scrape the idea.. I'd move to a VPS and then create a forum.. good idea??? Any more thoughts on this..

Truly getting good response and thoughts for my query.. Thank you all.

As Sunil mentioned earlier, you need a very specific topic that is highly focused on.  Medical blogs that feature a specific illness do great, it's an intimate topic and people are constantly seeking out advice. 

If you plan on covering topics that are already highly debuted on your blog then you can gauge the interactions by your current base of commenters alone.