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A little trick i learn't was to keep you forum unique from design to the forums category .

When starting a forum gather some friends to help you start off trhe forum so when you have new members joining they will always have something to talk about since this will help to keep your forum active.

Good Luck

Hmm.. nice trick, I should try some of it for my women community forum

I have a question about forum revenue, how to make income from forum? By online Ad?

Is it hard to make forum user to click on the ad?

maybe you could have ads for money (pay per click) and also the option to donate via paypal which would give you things like custom titles and animated avatars?

Donate for custom title and avatar is good idea. :cheesy:

I'm trying to setup a forum soon~

if you just want to play around with forums first in order to get some ideas sorted out, its relatively easy (under an hour) to get one set up on your windows pc using something like PhpBB and XAMPP

Well, I think content is a modest motivator, you need to know the trick how to reach to specific Mass with some of quality content and by reaching to that point content will begin to generate itself and so on it will increase new members. Apart this forum looks also play vital role. Just my thought!

Just wanted to add my experience regarding this topic.
I can't answer your question in the way you would maybe expect...
but let me tell you instead what will not work:

- Adwords
- Search Engine Submissions
- Directory Submissions

Don't waste your time with it