Stand Alone Forum Or Part Of Blog? Which Is Best?

[charlesjr]

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking for some overall advice, based on various experiences of running and growing a forum.

I have a network of about 20 sites, all in the same niche. Out of the 20 sites, I have my own personal blog, which gets about 40% of the traffic among the 20 sites. However, I would say all my sites contribute to sales, in some way.

My question is.. should I install / set up a forum as part of my blog? so the url is www.myblog.com/forum and then keep that as part of my own personal blog

or

Should I create a stand alone forum such as www.myforum.com?

I'm kind of stuck because I know a forum will drive traffic to your sites and it would be nice to have a lot of new traffic go to my blog, and drive the authority up of my blog as being the defacto source of my niche, but im also thinking of the advantages of having a stand alone forum, such as it being another traffic source to my overall network and having a much easier URL to remember versus something long, in addition to the look of being a lot more less biased to one particular site, it can stand a lone and be part of them all.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated... in summary should I

1) install as part of my blog (www.myblog.com/forum)

or

2) install on a separate URL and have a domain such as www.myforum.com

Thanks.

Charles