I am sure everyone is familiar with product centered websites such as engadget or others that showcase products.

Can the forum model be a successful way to promote a line of products? for example vitamins or skin care or health and beauty products ?

It seems a bit unusual format to design a product oriented site around but I am thinking it is worth a shot.

The approach would be to on home page make 10 to 15 topic areas. Then the first new post in each thread would have photo of product with detailed description similar to blog post.

Of course the most ideal situation from there would be for discussion under the product from other members to be positive and talk about what it does for them etc, or where do I buy this... but I guess that is a bit of a risk. Perhaps this type of forum has to be heavily moderated.

What do you guys think ?

I think forums are ideal for promoting anything, but they are also about the discussion model at first. "People got the power". And they should be honest and reliable. I.e. you should not leave just positive opinions, but also criticism, if it's grounded and based on facts, not just emotions coming from untrusted source. Also, the format you choose is not truly important - but so is the proper marketing.

Also, each forum should be moderated. Moderation is the basic principle of providing clean and expertised information. Of course, you as admin should be an expert #1 in the area your forums are about, the same about each Moderator you may have.

I don't think forum is the best solution for promoting products rather one should prefer to take help of social media channels for endorsing their products online that gives traffic within short span of time. Simply sharing on social media channels is not enough, One should also take help of backlinks for getting traffic in an organic way.

[Promo link removed by administrator]

But.. you've just proven yourself wrong.. You spammed the forum with useless garbage just to be able to post a link on a platform that, as you claim, is not a good solution for promoting. Besides, SEO has become a game of fraudsters who try to sell a bridge in NYC to unsuspected people.