Nick Bouton is a software developer by trade, but on the side he has designed
and developed a collaborative creative fiction writing community, which he
hosts and moderates. He says the majority of forum moderators are unpaid,
part-time volunteers. However, there are some salaried, full-time employees
or entrepreneurs like himself.
"I think that unless you're working as a community manager (which is primarily
a PR role and has other aspects to it than simply moderating forums), it's
a very difficult area to get into without starting your own community. Most
forums moderators are either subject-matter experts who have a lot of time
on their hands, or they're people running start-ups like myself," says Bouton.
Josh Millard is a moderator/administrator for Metafilter Network LLC. His
hours vary, but he considers it a full-time job.
Millard notes that enthusiastic, long-term members of the site are prime
candidates to become moderators.
"Those folks are also likely the most willing to take on moderation/hosting
duties for free, seeing it as much as a privilege as anything. So the ready
pool of volunteer labor in a lot of cases may undercut the market price for
this sort of thing -- at least in the case of established communities," he
says.
There are no official numbers to gauge how many online community hosts
exist. Most in the business guess that it's in the tens of thousands based
on the number of websites with community areas.
"Forums are also growing very popular with businesses. Forums can serve
businesses many purposes, such as support and advertising. Sometimes the forums
even generate more revenue for the website," says Karl Nyen. He is the lead
global forum moderator for Markee Dragon, a gaming forum with about 80,000
members.
Nyen says social networking sites such as Facebook have brought more opportunities.
Bouton agrees that Facebook is a great forum for advocacy groups.
"Its popularity alone, and how simple it is to launch a Facebook group
about your favorite product, politician, game, etc., and generate a lot of
interest amongst Facebook's community, has probably given more traditional
PR/marketing departments a lot of ideas about how to communicate with their
community more directly via an online forum," says Bouton.
Millard forecasts that the community component of many sites will be an
important part of a lot of business models. "I think this area is only going
to grow, and quickly, and for a good long time," he says.
Earnings and employment information from the U.S. Department of Labor is
not available for this field at this time.