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Make your website more profitable by starting your own forum

By Jakob Jelling
http://www.sitetube.com

The idea behind any business is to make and maintain profits and increase those profits over a period of time. When you’re engaged in conducting business over a medium as dynamic and fast moving as the Internet, then you need to make sure your homework is done, and your research complete. Well you may ask, what does including a forum on my site have anything to do with increasing profits? Simple enough, a forum is an open discussion message board where users and visitors in some cases may “post” questions, or simply put, ask questions and get answers to almost anything they ask. There are thousands of forums on the Internet and they cover almost every topic you can think of. The beauty of the forum is that you can get hundreds of tips and advice relating to how to deal with this, that and the other.

Forums are fantastic means to get people to come back again and again to your site because the questions and the answers posted upon a forum interests them. It also gives a great sense of membership and community. Regular users of the forum gradually become addicted to the interaction upon the posting boards of forums and due to this they return time and again which works very well for you as every time a user returns it gives you the chance to sell a product.

You can save tremendous amounts of time and utilize that additional time towards other work on your site if you have forum. Forums usually answer the queries and questions of users internally, as in other users often answer the questions posed, this saves you time and settles the doubts of your users which gives them a sense of satisfaction making it amenable for them to return to your site a number of times for more tips, answers and solutions.

A good, active forum can help you improve your search engine ranking because search engines prefer sites that are regularly updated with new information. The forum discussions between your users and you may actually end up being featured on the search engine list in regards to specific keywords that have been discussed at your site. A higher ranking translates into greater traffic that means more users for your forum. An increase in the traffic at your forum can also mean that you might be introduced to new ideas, as new users will inevitably post new questions. By observing and watching out for common questions about a certain kind of product, you can make more money by introducing a new product whose idea originally occurred to you through the posts made on the forum. In addition to this, you can advertise on your forum, advertising your products and services that are relevant to the user or you may advertise the product of your associates and even allow your users to advertise on your site and place a link connecting your sites together.

Forums are not just designed to increase your profits and chances of making more money but they are also great interactive fun. You can meet many new people who are like-minded and who provide great entertainment through debating and discussing topics that are important and precious to you.

Getting started on a forum for your website is not very hard to do; all you need to do is to keep certain things in mind. Firstly, you must decide what your forum is to be all about, it is important that you know sufficient information about the subject you intend your forum to be based upon before you begin the forum. Your users will lose faith in you if you fail to answer their queries. Secondly, you must buy a domain that relates to your forum. Thirdly, do adopt the suitable software for your forum. Of all the software for forums available on the Internet, a few really stand out like phpBB, Vbulletin and Invasion Power Board, but make sure you adopt the software most suited to your needs.
Including a forum will provide more depth and variety to your site, not to mention more profits.

About the author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

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