The Value Of Having A Forum. Do people with forums really make more than the guys with just regular websites?

Recently a post was made here at PAW, and there has been a lot of discussion on the value of having a forum on your website.  Although the forums at PAW have been a great success, I have also had many that have been failures.  The true value of a forum amounts to one of three things; Either building a database, Generating repeat traffic and an active community, Or building a brand with supporters in a specific industry or niche.

But let's look deep into the question at hand. Many people look at active forums and think that the webmasters there must be making a killing.  In many cases yes they are, but don't let your thoughts get skewed by this.  Many are not making a dime and wondering how to monetize this big forum they have.  Simply having thousands of registered members in a forum never equates to money in your pocket.

I have ran many websites and many forums over the years.  I have had several small websites with forums that were very successfull, and many large websites with forums that turned out to be failures.  So I suppose I am unfortunatley qualified to talk about this subject.  Trust me, I have seen it go both ways with forums.  Likewise, a great forum today could be a dead forum tommorow.

Here is the fundamental problem with having forums.  90% of them are going to fail and not be a profitable venture.........sorry but this is the truth.  Many people will be dedicated the first month and post like crazy on their own account as well as fake accounts.  This is fine and I encourage it, but after a few months when no one is responding they give up.  This happens all the time.  Many of you reading this may have even experienced this at some point in your affiliate career.  Not a big deal though, we have all been there. But please read the following and take note.

If you read nothing else, READ THIS!

The BIGGEST problem with webmasters that "start" a forum driven website is that they focus on the wrong areas of importance.  When webmasters start a website with a forum, most of these webmasters place way too much focus on "forum members" versus actual traffic to the site.  All these webmasters care about is how many members joined their forum today.  Now lets think about this logically for a minute.  Would you rather have 5 new members to your forum in a day, or 1000 new unique visitors from search engines, PPC, or targeted advertising?  I can tell you first hand that the value of a forum member is far less than the random visitor that found you in a search engine looking for a very specific term.

When looking at monetizing a website, a random visitor that was searching for a specific term is worth a lot more money than a "forum member" who just wants to chat about something on the internet. 

Now don't get me wrong, many forums have been very good to me and I do see and know the potentiol in having them.  But at the end of the day, the most important focus for a new website is without a doubt TRAFFIC, not forum members.  I personally have friends that have forums with 20K members that don't make squat in terms of revenue, but have websites getting only 300 uniques a day making them money.  Not to take anything away from their big forum, but you have to think about monetization in respect to database versus clicks.  Which will make you more money?  In many cases, it will be clicks if you are being found or visited for very specific keywords or terms.

In closing and in respect to our market, the general poker market is going to be a VERY difficult market for an affiliate to launch a new forum and be successful.  I would suggest focusing your efforts on bringing traffic to your websites and converting them to players. In fact I think you will see greater success launching a blog than you will a forum.  Unless you can come up with something unique that the top poker forums don't already offer, it is going to be a very tough road.  Instead of launching a forum right from the start, why not work on building your traffic to 3k-5K uniques a day, and then launch your forum?

Hopefully this helps a few of you.  But myself and many of the other vetran PAW members will tell you, building a forum can be one of the most difficult things in the world to do.  This is especially true in the poker affiliate industry.