bradley_phil - 3:36 pm on Jul 27, 2005 (gmt 0)

The modern equivalent of the proverbial thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters. ;)

well, not really; for starters, the members read many websites and forums which i don't - hence they will hear about breaking news (e.g. about a particular band from that band's forums) up to a day or two before i do. If I invite news article submissions - very short pieces similar in length to a thought-through post on a forum, and I review, edit and then approve these articles, my site is constantly refreshing its news content and is staying very much at the forefront of the neighbourhood (and therefore more likely to be linked to, by people who read the news then post about it elsewhere)

From time to time a member might write a particularly long and interesting post; a PM and a promise of the glory of being mentioned on the front page would be all the stimulus that's needed for that member to go back to his post and turn it into a fully fledged article, reading for putting on a new content page on the site, listing him as the author. This could tie in to a member reputation point scheme perhaps (though i find those a bit lame)

Finally, if ever I feel like writing an article myself, starting a topic in the forums will allow to judge the general feeling amongst readers of the site regarding that issue, as well as potentially throwing up a lot of relevant information and knowledge, without me having to go look it up.

A good admin is well connected to the community and posts a lot - using the community to generate new, original and opinionated content is just taking that connection to a new level, and getting something out of it. Because I don't feel that banner ads on a forum are an effective revenue source.

There are lots of other ways of monetising a forum, involving sponsorships and so on - but for banner ads, i'd rather keep my forum fairly free of low paying, never-clicked ads; putting a content site around the forums, with the content being created in the forums, and putting AdSense on those pages, will be a much more worthwhile pastime (I hope!)

At the moment my forum isn't large enough to do this on a significant scale, so these are untested ramblings from a young entrepreneur :D