If one goes to a webmasters forum, one would invariably come across threads from forum administrator on how bad their forum are performing, that no one wants to join them and old members are leaving or not posting as regularly as they used to.

While there are several reasons behind the sudden fall of a forum, I am going to discuss some of these issues in this two part article and tell you if your forum is destined to be a failure.

Starting the forum for wrong reasons…

That’s right; I have always come across forums which were started for reasons which are likely to cause the forum to fail inevitably. So before you invest your money and resource in starting a forum delve a little deeper for the reasons you want to start it and if it is one of the reasons I have listed below, then take a deep breath and do some soul searching before jumping the gun:

To get back at another forum: This seems to be one of the primary reasons why one sees new forums sprouting up almost every day. Most often than not rogue members of a particularly large or moderately successful forum might become unhappy/distressed with the forum administrator or their policy and decide to break away and start their own forum. Most often than not, forums like these don’t survive long and fail miserably.

Why?

They fail because of a simple reason, propagating negativeness and hate almost never leads to long term growth. Most often than not, these forums become the ranting point for members of the larger forum and people join not to discuss issues which they felt were being ignored by the other forum but to bitch about it. This state usually doesn’t last long and most members though still unhappy get bored with the alternative and go back to posting at the older forum.

If you are one of those who want to start a forum because you are unhappy with the current forum you’re participating in, then my suggestion would be not to try and become an alternative to the other forum by copying every thing from it, instead try and bring some uniqueness to your forum. Make sure you don’t try to steal members from other forums; instead try to grow on your own by writing articles and addressing issue you felt were being ignored by the older forums administration.

To make easy money: Many fail to realize how resource and time consuming running a forum can be. Many think on the basis of user generated content they will rank well in search engines and make some easy money. Well I got news for you; it is only some time before you realize what you got yourself into.

Forums are difficult to monetize and getting them to rank well in SERPs is tougher than getting a blog or normal site to rank. Even though in most successful forums an administrator usually doesn’t have to create majority of the content, in the initial phase (read 1-2 years) constant hand holding and content creation by the administrator himself is required on an almost daily basis along with promoting the forum through various channels.

Forums are also poor revenue generator unless you get a large number of people from search engines every day, since most of the regular visitors and member rarely if ever click on ads. Add to this, forums often need more resources to run than a simple blog or a website which adds to the overall expenditure.

Latest fad: Many these days start a forum because it is a latest fad and they feel being an administrator of a forum would be boastful for them. With out having knowledge of the niche they start a forum and after a couple of months of doing it for fun, they suddenly realize that it isn’t as fun as they first thought it would be. You will come across these people scouring through webmaster forums asking for ideas or niche they could target, well let’s face it, if you can’t even come up with the niche you need to target how do you expect to do well in it? It would be better if you stick to your job and try to become a contributing member in a forum you are interested in and maybe some day you will climb up to the ranks of moderator or even an administrator.

So what are some of the right reasons to start a forum?

• Start a forum because you are genuinely interested in the niche you plan to launch your forum.
• Start a forum because you have knowledge about a particular niche and are genuinely interested in learning more about it and at the same time helping those who know even less.
• Start a forum because you feel what you are looking for cannot be found any where else and it would be helpful to people like you.
• Start a forum not as a shortcut to the riches, but for a journey full of joy and experiences which will leave you enlightened and proud with the knowledge that you have accomplished far more than you could ever hope for.

About the author

This article was written by Yogesh Sarkar, who is the author of Content Pays.

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