Forums provide something special that a normal content driven site does not. Interaction. Forums offer visitors and members on a website a place to communicate, share ideas, and get help from other members. Whether you forum stands alone, or is an addition to a website, it is a valuable asset.

Forums Are Fun
If you own a forum on a topic that you find interesting, you will find that they can be a lot of fun to own. Not only will you meet new people on a daily basis, but you can become friends with them. Some of the funniest things I’ve read on the internet have been forum postings. Members feel free to say whatever they want (within the rules of your site), and often times it can leave you rolling on the floor in laughter.

Forums Are A Challenge
Most webmaster and online entrepreneurs crave a challenge. Anyone can build a myspace resource site in 10 minutes and start promoting it. Forums are the complete opposite. They take a lot of TLC and a lot of time. Getting visitors to sign up, and ultimately post, is very challenging.

Forums Mimic Real Life Business
Owning a forum closely resembles owning a real business. With a standard content website, you likely run the entire project yourself. However, that’s not the case with a forum. You have staff members on forums. Your job as a forum Administrator is to manage your staff, just as a CEO manages his employees. You might assign different tasks to different moderators. You may have recruiters or crew members. Each member of your staff is an employee, whether they’re paid or not. That’s what makes forums so much like a brick and mortar business.

Forums Are Profitable
Forums may not be as profitable as other websites right off the bat, but given time a forum can be a cash cow like you wouldn’t imagine. Along with Adsense and affiliate offers, forums can make a lot of money through memberships and donations. Provide members a reason to upgrade to a premium account, and watch the money come in.

Forums Are Valuable
Forums are one of the few genres of websites that users create the content for you. In addition to that, forums make your site visitors want to come back to your website everyday. That makes a forum highly valuable. If you check website marketplaces from time to time, you will often see that forums are the most highly sought after websites. This leads them to sell for a lot more then that typical 10-12x monthly revenue suggestion you see floating around. I myself have sold a forum for 876x monthly revenue. If you have a powerful niche forum, then the sky’s the limit.

So not only are forums fun, challenging and business like, but they are also very profitable and valuable. Not everyone is cut out to own a forum. It takes dedication and determination.