One way to make money online is to set-up a message board and run an online community. There are 2 popular ways to monetize a forum: (1) premium membership and (2) advertisements.

Members are usually willing to pay a reasonable one-time or monthly fee for extra privileges such as more spaces in signatures or access to a private forum that offers additional tips and tricks. The admin can offer premium membership for such access.

Running ads is the more common way to make money from a forum.  Advertisements can be any or a combination of the following: (1) direct paid advertisements, (2) banner advertising networks, (3) Pay Per Click (PPC), and affiliate programs.

In direct paid advertising, the forum can directly offer ad space to interested parties. One can also join banner advertising networks such as project wonderful where buyers look for websites they can place ads on. Pay Per Clicks like AdSense is perhaps the most common ads we see in forums. Finally, admins can sign-up with affiliate programs and place ad banners around there forum so whenever anybody clicks through and buys something, they get a cut of the profit.

However, making money is simply not a matter of simply plastering ads around the forum. For a web-savvy clientele, such as webmastering or gaming forums, Pay Per Click usually don’t work well as the audience are already jaded or ads-blind. The best options for such forums are premium membership or  direct paid advertisements.

Lastly, an admin’s first concerns should be to bring in members and encourage activity. Once the forum is pretty active, then it’s time to bring in the monetization schemes.

As indicated in this post entitled How to Post a Link in a Forum, bulletin boards or forums use a special code called BBcode for formatting text and inserting links and images. BBcodes are formatted with the rectangular brackets (“[" and"]“).  Their operation is similar to HTML tags.

Most forums comes installed with a default set BBcodes ready for our use. Sadly strikethrough isn’t one of them.  However, there are hacks or plugins that allow BBcodes for strikethrough to be added by the admin.

To test if a forum has the strikethrough BBcode installed, simply use the following tags: [s] and [/s]. For illustration, we’re going to use it to put a line across the word “strikethrough” in the title of this post: how to [s]strikethrough[/s] a forum post. It would appears as: how to strikethrough a forum post.

If it doesn’t work, try contacting the admin to install the code. It might also be that a different tag is used as there are several implementations of BBcode.

One part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is off-page SEO. Off-page SEO deals with getting other websites to link to ours. One such opportunity is offered by forums or bulletin boards that allows us to post links without the NoFollow tag (that tag tell Google bots not to follow the links, thus giving us no link juice for our efforts).

Bulletin boards or forums commonly use BBcode (Bulletin Board Code). It is a special implementation of HTML that allows us to format our posts without affecting the core HTML code. The tags are indicated by rectangular brackets (“[" and "]“).

When we want to create a link within our forum post, we use the following tag: [url=][/url]. For instance, if we want to create a link to this post, the tag will look like this: [url=http://www.reapmoneyonline.com/09/how-to-post-a-link-in-a-forumhow-to-post-a-link-in-a-forum] How to post a link in a forum [/url]. The “how to post a link in a forum” text can be anything we desire.

When we submit the post, what will appear in the text is the words “How to post a link in a forum” with an uderline or any decoration that indicates a link. When people click on those words, they are taken to the website or web page we linked to.

Easy, huh?

Despite the boom in social networking sites such as MySpace and Ning, the simplicity of bulletin boards, both from the administration and users perspective, keeps them popular. So much so that any long time member of such a community invariably ask themselves on how to create an online forum.

Fortunately, the latest versions of popular bulletin board software are even easier to install and manage. It’s a breeze installing them and in less than a day, anybody can have a decent-looking forum. 

Here are the basic steps to making a forum:

1. Study a niche.

What is a niche? In internet marketing, a niche is simply a group of surfers with similar interest that we can tap to buy our products. At its most basic sense, a forum is an online community or space (which can also be considered a product) that we offer for the use of like-minded individuals.

We should study our intended niches intensively. The perfect combination is a big population with little competiton from other forums. Keep away from saturated niches like webmastering and gaming, unless we can identify a sub-niche with enough population to keep our forum going.

2. Register a domain name.

What is a domain name? It’s the name of a website we enter in the browser address bar. For instance, the domain name for this blog is reapmoneyonline.com. Choose domain names that are relevant to our intended niche. It’s been a recent fad to go for cute-sounding but short names like poondle.com but wouldn’t it be more descriptive if we instead use poodletown.com for poodle owners?

Search for domain names using the online tool InstantDomainSearch. Be sure to click the link the says “Click here to encrypt your searches.” Somebody’s probably waiting to steal our ideas. For domain registrations, check out affordable domains at Moniker.

3. Buy a webhost.

What is a web host provider? A web host rents out space in a server for our use. There are usually 4 major packages to choose from: (1) shared hosting, (2) reseller hosting, (3) Virtual Private Servers, and (4) dedicated servers. For begginers a shared web host is enough but if we plan to develop more sites, it’s best to start with a reseller package. Check out ResellerPanel’s reseller packages. For shared hosting, HostGator has affordable packages. 

4. Install a forum or bulletin board script.

Fortunately for us, there are FREE web forum software that rivals the paid ones in quality. The standards in free forum scripts are set by Simple Machines Forum (SMF) and phpBB. Other popular and free forum scripts includes MyBB, punBB, and Vanilla.

Most webhosts usually have automatic script installers such as Fantastico. We recommend the free bulletin board software MyBB for those who are trying to make their first forum. It’s easy to install and modify and the online community is supportive.

4. Market the forum and get members to sign-up.

Finally! We have a forum up and running. Now what? We have to bring in users to populate our online community. We need to promote our forum in other sites and bulletin boards.

When people come to an empty forum, they usally leave. Getting the first few hundred posts is often the most difficult to do. Some administrators surmount this obstacle by hiring paid forum posters. They are usually usefull in kick-starting a forum into life.

A favorite trick among administrators is to provide incentives for members in other forums where they hangout to help them populate their online communities. For instance, some admin has bought the services of DNtemple members with DNbucks to make some post. Get creative!