Running a successful forum

[Martee]

By successful, I mean a site which has many active members, lots of daily posts and maybe even provides you with a revenue stream. It strikes me as a nice feeling in which you are being repaid for your work.

Although I'd say its different for everyone, what do you all think (or know) what it feels like?

 

[Sam1]

-When the owner can go away for a few weeks and not see any decrease in traffic or posts.
-When new members are joining every day.
-When the forum is mentioned on other sites in it's niche on a regular basis.
-When the forum is high up in Googles rankings for it's keywords and has a high PR.

That would be my criteria for a successful forum.

 

[shadowslight]

In my view a successfull forum don't necessarily need to have new members everyday, but rather staying active. I found this to be the case on my site.

 

[Southern Comfort]

Successful to me is people enjoying themselves and not having me to post after each person for them to hold a conversation. I don't really care about stats, they are nice to look at but they usually don't count towards my success meter. If people enjoy themselves, new posts and topics everyday, and people just being generally interested, I'm happy.