Creating business plan for a forum!?

workaccount

Hi there everyone - new to this subforum.

I am thinking about starting my own forum using phpbb or vbulletin.

My question is about hosting though and how to get some sort of performance idea into your head. I'm hoping somebody here can give me some info or pointers in the right direction.

I want to do up a long term plan you see (business plan) so I need to look forward a few months/years with an idea of costs involved given amount of posts, including images etc - basically bandwidth costs but also bandwidth speed/throughput costs required to maintain good performance.

Then you have the machine the site is being hosted on - I know that all the cheap hosting solutions are shared machines so I want to get an idea of how long you can stay on such a solution.

That's all the costs covered.


The next problem would be to figure out where you make the money. Advertising, affiliates - Are there any stats available where you can get a feel for the type of money involved?

Thanks very much.

NeverSayDie

You might get better responses here OP;
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=106

Evil Phil

Moved from Tech -> Development.

Webmonkey

Hi WorkAccount,

Will your business be based totally on this forum? It is very difficult to predict future traffic trends, especially as you are starting?

Getting traffic to a website is quite difficult and requires an incremental approach where you might for example blog about something, get the site ranked higher over time and then once you've enough start a forum.

You will need to build up some visitor/site user base before starting a forum in my opinion.

Best luck with it.

Slippin Jimmy

What is the forum going to be based on?

I think these are some questions you should ask yourself to help out with your business plan .Is there enough demand at the moment for you to supply a forum? What other forums are out there that are similar to yours? How will your forum be different to what there is already now?

I think it's a great idea to start a forum, i've done it myself. I don't see how you can really make a business out of it, there is obviously ways if you are going to. I wish you the best of luck and hope this helps.

Sposs

In terms of hosting costs , most VPS machines are now as cheap as shared hosting and makes life much easier in terms of scaling your site as it grows. Best advice is to start small and then worry about growing when you have users and a better idea of the amount of traffic/space you actually require.

Cianos

Building a good forum takes a lot of time and effort. And even then they don't necessarily make any significant cash.

Be sure that there's a lot of choice out there when it comes to forums, so what is it about yours that makes it different?

The best way to start a good forum is to focus in on a very specific niche topic and make sure you have good SEO so that people also interested in your topic will come across your site and hopefully get involved.

Post up more info about what type of forum you want to build and it'd be easier to give advice.

Trevor451

You could use a free host like byethost ( I use them for my joomla/forum site) they have a automatic script installer too which I found helpful since I know nothing about php :rolleyes:

byrne0f56789

It all comes down to testing and measuring as you go. Get started and constantly try things until you find something that works.