I can assure you starting a forum is not as easy as one may think. Before you start your forum, here are three key elements you need to know.

Goal. What kind of forum are you building? Is it an advertising forum where anyone can come and promote their opportunities or is it a community forum where people can network, learn, and share? If it's the latter, you will need a lot more planning.

Time. It takes a lot of devotion, effort and energy. You can't start a forum and expect it to run itself. That won't happen until you start the groundwork and even then don't expect miracles. To develop a viable community forum it can take months and even years.

Patience. Not only will you be spending a lot of time creating it, but when you open its door and a few dozens have trickled in will you feel you have failed? What if these few dozens turn out be lurkers/readers only? You will need to create threads and peak people's interest or get them to respond to your posts. You want to start discussions and hope it takes the domino effect. You want them to contribute and start discussions on their own. It needs to be promoted constantly and consistently if you want the traffic and people to come. After all, you didn't create it so you can talk to yourself.

You will need to train your moderators. Yes, eventually you will need moderators because...

"If you build it, it will come." Yes it will! As a matter of fact they will come in droves...spam bots and human spammers that is. Not exactly the type of members you would like to have, right? You will want your moderators to know what is not acceptable, training your mods how to move/delete/merge posts, ban, etc. A tip: Don't wait for the spam bots...install a hack to curb the bots before they get the chance to take over you and your forum.

Hard work aside, having a community forum is fun and it's a wonderful way to be interactive with many people around the world. It's a valuable and excellent marketing and learning tool that if used properly can be successful for everyone involved.

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About The Author:  S McIntyre owns Work At Home Space, a free work at home resource offering telecommuting jobs, daily job leads, articles, business resources and other work at home related issues. You can also visit her blog Healthy Perspectives, featuring an array of health topics, nutrition, fitness and recipes for maintaining a healthy and well-balanced lifestyle.

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