someone is taking the p*** with my new forum

[zaq]

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I setup a new forum and have a few members its only been online for 2 weeks now but there is another forum which has 1000s of members and they are posting ads on my forum.

l am sick and tired of this cheap low life marketing, but the owner of the other forum say its not him posting the ads.l dont what to get into playing games l place a ad on his forum and then he does on my forum its just stupid l did offer a link exhange as he has a lot more members then me but he said no.


So far l have banned 8 new members because there first post was ads for this other forum, can anyone here please advice me in anyway l can stop this ***** form posting ads on my forum l already banned there ip address but he is still posting ads always at 12pm at night the t*** does now l work online till 3am in the morning.

###Edited For Language###

[NaturalInstinct]

we've been thinking about adding a forum for ages on natural instinct. Everyone knows that building a community around a certain subject encourages repeat visits and more residual sales.

However, the reason we haven't done it yet is because we're worried about exactly this kind of behaviour. Our customer base programme affiliates would love it if their customers stuck around and eventually made more purchases but they'd be flipping annoyed if they were sending visitors to us and those visitors were reading spam from other sites and clicking through.

We're still weighing up the possibility of having a really tighly controlled forum and we'd love to know if anyone has had good experiences with forums ?

Some people (competitors presumably) already abuse our product reviews section and i'm often having to delete customer reviews for spamming so I suppose it wouldn't be that different

[getvisible]

Everyone knows that building a community around a certain subject encourages repeat visits and more residual sales.

Perhaps you should ask Mat?

I've got a forum on one of my sites. The topic of that site naturally requires more than one person (although thinking about it, solo activities are very popular too ) By its very nature building a community where visitors return will encourage repeate sales as you build up customer raport.

Busy people have money to spend but theyre too busy working to hang around forums.

How many messages are on this forum and how much do we earn? Yes normall 9-5ers do like to hang out on forums - and to some it forms the corner stone of their life and furthermore, people often wish to consult a forum before they make a purchase decision.

To me, forums have their merits if managed well and the balance of commercialism and information is right.

[adigaskell]

I think that any means of fostering community is good providing you understand your market and your customers.

Amazon has it right with its reviews section because it allows people to write about Amazon products and encourages return visits.

Forums can work but it depends on your market. The ADSL Guide site has a great forum with contributions from the main broadband providers and thousands of customers. I don't know how the site makes money but I would imagine that it has become the definitive resource on the web and would be quite easy to make money.

As far as I can see forums serve two purposes.

1. They let customers help themselves and each other. Nothing is better than allowing customers to find out things for themselves and of course most people love helping others (witness this place). Forums can be great for this kind of interaction and of course provides the company with a vast amount of feedback. I think Cisco use this kind of method on their site.

2. Foster community. If your site sells sexy undies then the forum could become the authority for sexy undies or even sex itself. That will help to build untold loyalty to your brand and reinforce the view that your products are sexy.

Of course building a community needs to be done properly because there is nothing worse than a forum with tumbleweed blowing through it. Worth the effort though if done properly.

[NaturalInstinct]

some really helpful replies guys, maybe we should run a poll on whether to have a forum or not ?

[adigaskell]

I don't think moderating a forum has to be an expensive excercise. If you have a good community going it could be kudos to be asked to moderate a forum and people would be happy to do the job.

As for making money from the forum itself that misses the point of the forum in the first place. The idea behind having a forum is to get people coming back to your site time and time again. Everyone knows how easy it is to lose a customer on the Internet so any means of creating brand loyalty is a very important concept.

It can also provide a useful service to customers, which is another important element in ensuring they return to buy from you in the future.

[NaturalInstinct]

personally i don't think there's a question mark over whether developing a comminity by using tools like a forum is a good thing, i'm sure of it. The question is how do you stop abuse ?

[adigaskell]

One possible avenue would be to open up a service and trade type category. Here people could post requests for certain things and companies could respond. Make it clear that no spamming will be allowed and you provide a resource for your visitors whilst allowing a small degree of advertising. Obviously most services requested would be ancilliary to your own catalogue so would further enhance your reputation as the authority on the sex clothing industry.

[SillyJokes]

I don't think a shop should ever have a forum.

The abuse is just too damaging.
People book mark the forum and never visit the rest of the site.

We have had some free fun areas where people can submit content and nine times out of ten it is unusable because it contains unsuitable content - a forum is open to this too and moderating it would be a full time job.

No way, I can put my time into far better features.

Also the moderation can be too strong.

I was on the Well Being forum and offered a post natally depressed women a link to a post natal depression support website only to have it deleted. Boots had that forum so well moderated it was useless.

A content site which offers useful info is the perfect place for a forum however.

[matbennett]

I look after a couple of sites with very successful Forums, but these are not sales orientated sites. My experience is that, unless there is a very specific reason why a forum would work for a particular site, they really don't sit well with retail.

never underestimate the work involved in running a forum. One competitor posting an ad is just the tip of the iceberg. The last forum that I looked after on a retail site would receive 60 to 70 posts like that every day (anyone care to guess why we ditched it???). It was great for getting search-engine results, but the conversion was appalling!

All that said, if you are going to run one ensure that you have the tools available to run it well. Ideally I prefer that new members must have their posts moderated until they have reached a certain number of posts. This really slashes the problem. In addition ensure that you have the ability to ban IP address, and domains from posting / signup.

Also ensure that your system verifies email addresses (mail their password to them or similar), as this at least ensures that you have a way of contacting to them.

If your forum software has a "curse words" filter, or if you are able to code it yourself, you can always ban the name / URL of your competitors. This can be quite effective.

Good luck!

[zaq]

Thanks all for your feedback and thank you to matbennett for the curse words" filter idea nice one thats a big help

[stevectaylor]

If it is the software used for this forum, you can ban certain words. They tries my forum but I have banned www, @, com, and co.uk. it works very effective and stopped the adds.

[zaq]

Thank you stevectaylor

[Flightmapping]

I have had a forum for a couple of months, but not really done much with it. I did have the problems Zaq mentioned with a spammer trying to link to another site, but he went away after I deleted two of his posts. Recently, I have started promoting the forum more within the site, and am thinking about using it to answer general questions about finding flights. At the moment I do get a few of these requests by e-mail, but replying to them is time-consuming, and makes me out to be a travel agent. Answering them in a forum makes the information available to a much wider audience.

The banning filter is interesting - I'll have to investigate if my forum can do that. However, by posting there myself, I still want to be able to offer links to places within the site. Has anyone edited other people's posts to do this, or would this be considered unethical? Also, a forum can naturally collect a large range of e-mails. Can forum users be sent newsletters, or might they be regarded as spam?

[loquax]

Our forum has grown steadily over time - and we do make use of the word censor, although with phpBB whilst the printed url may look to be censored, the click url sometimes isn't.

If a site is being a major problem hard code something in - or take the bull by the teeth and post something on your forum. If you have a couple of regulars see if they'll help you moderate.

There are days when I do think the forum is more hassle than I need - usually because one person is being a pain in the butt - but 9 days out of 10 it runs itself and the community spirit is there.

People advertising is a pain - but it happens - and well meaning users will always post links to competitor sites and services. Just be ready to explain what you've done and why if you delete/edit posts.

It does annoy me when competitors deliberately post - but take it as flattery that they want to be on your site - shows how desperate they are to be associated with you

I think as mat says, get yourself organised and set up - and it does get easier (although stress levels do occasionally go through the ceiling).

You will encounter many more challenges and interesting users even when you think it's all running fine

Jason