Help Creating a Forum to Generate Leads

[azmat]

Hey everyone. I needed some advice on adding forums to a site and using it for lead generation. I wanted to create a forum where my visitors can post their questions and get answers to their specific questions by some experts related to my niche.

So here is an example scenario:
1. User posts their question
2. Experts answers their question (for free)
3. User can browse the answers.
4. Under each expert answer, (or under the avatar/pic of each expert) there would be a call to action. ex: "Get A Free consultation from X" or "Get in touch with X"
5. If the user clicks the call to action, they are taken to a contact form page for person X.
6. At this point a lead has been generated and can be tracked.

I am fairly new to this so forgive me if this is pretty straightforward task. I have seen a few wordpress forum plugins but haven't really seen how I can customize them to add a call to action. I would appreciate if anyone can give me some advice or links to forums that have this functionality. It would be good to hear from people who have set up forums so that I can ask some follow up questions regarding managing them. Thanks!

[hervens]

Although forums are traditionally terrible ways to make money unless you're getting tons of traffic (by tons I mean like 100k visits/month at least), your particular idea seems like it might just work.

However, I don't think most forum softwares have the functionally that your're looking for, and you might end up having to program your own forum software. Just make sure to keep things simple, kind of like what I did on my site: kissmybooboo.net If you don't have any significant programming knowledge, you can always hire a company/freelancer to take care of it for you. getafreelancer.com might be a great place to start.

Another (cheaper) idea would be to add a link to the consultation page in the expert's signature, and redirect it to a diferent website, probably powered by SBI, where they would be able to find an email adress and phone number as well as a quote. Kind of like what erin Pavlina has on her site: Intuitive Readings with Erin Pavlina

Anyhow good luck.

[azmat]

Thanks Hervens. Yes you are right I should keep things simple. I like the way your forum works and looks Can you tell me which software you used? I know some programming (not an expert but some). Perhaps I can play around with it and see how affective it is. Thanks

[hervens]

Originally Posted by azmat

Thanks Hervens. Yes you are right I should keep things simple. I like the way your forum works and looks Can you tell me which software you used? I know some programming (not an expert but some). Perhaps I can play around with it and see how affective it is. Thanks

I did not use any software. I created it from scratch using c#, asp.net, MySQL for the database, and photohosp for the theme.

It should be a relatively simple task for an experienced programmer/developper. You can probably get a freelancer/software engineer to create something similar to what you' re looking for for a couple hundred dollards. Again, getafreelancer.com is a great place to start. Just be sure to be very clear about your requirements, and make sure the person you are hiring has a vast portfolio of existing software/web applications.

[Aminka Ozmun]

Azmat,

You may be interested in the AskIt! WordPress theme from Elegant Themes (yes, that's my affiliate link, if you don't mind!)...sounds like just what you're looking for, though not a forum per se.

It turns your WordPress site into a Q&A site, with the ability for users to leave comments and vote on answers given. Check it out!

[azmat]

Thanks hervens.

@Aminka. Thanks! I'll be sure to check it out the Q&A themes. Are you able to edit the signatures of the users (such as adding buttons, more information or deleting useless info)?

[Aminka Ozmun]

Originally Posted by azmat

Thanks! I'll be sure to check it out the Q&A themes. Are you able to edit the signatures of the users (such as adding buttons, more information or deleting useless info)?

Not sure what you mean by "edit the signatures," since as the admin you can certainly edit anything about the comments, and I'm not sure either about what you mean by "adding buttons," though that sounds like a task any number of free publicly available WordPress plugins can handle, but I do know that members of your site can vote for one another based on the quality of the answers they've given!

Don't hesitate to contact creator/owner Nick Roach himself through the site; though still in college he's quite responsive! Let me know if you get the help you need. As a member, I could always ask in the private forums on your behalf, too!