I am considering on making a new Admin, Promotion forum.
I will be using MyBB free forum software, simply because I enjoy posting on it + so easy to navigate in the ACP.
Now since there is tons of admin, promotion forums that are not active at all what is the reason of them failing?
Owners not active enough, advertising enough etc?
I am considering this, but doesn't mean I'll be doing it.
Is Admin, Promotion with posting services etc a bad genre now a days?
I think why promotion forums fail is a combination of these three things.
First off is dedication. It takes more than one person to make a successful forum. If/when you start your forum, you need a team of people just as dedicated as you are to make this forum work. The people who go half way just won't cut it if you're truly looking to be successful.
The second thing is originality. Another FP or TAZ clone won't go anywhere. Part of the issue with making a promotion forum is finding people to promote there. You need to offer something no one else has, and you can't be afraid to fail with your ideas. If you want people to join your forum, you'll need plenty of ideas.
The third and final thing you'll need is passion. This partly goes with the first point; however, you need to be truly passionate about promotion forums. You'll need to be able to grind out your ideas, as well as keep the forum populated with activity.
I ran one from 2007 - 2009. It got to be a decent size and was pretty active.
Like John said, you need a team of people to keep it alive. Promotion forums are a lot of work (depending on what services you provide) and I personally didn't find it to be a rewarding experience. It felt more like a 2nd job that I wasn't getting paid for. It became a chore after a while.
The most stressful part was keeping the review team & package team fully staffed with people who do quality work (for free) and making sure those services were completed in a resonalble amount of time.
The most enjoyable part of the forum (for me) was the off topic sections where I could talk about whatever and shoot the breeze with the community members. That's why my next project was a general discussion forum.
Another possible point of view is not always originality, but more about quality and result. I don't think people will really mind old methods; we will always appreciate cheap packages or interesting exchanges. But I guess sometimes it doesn't give the push that we need due to the (perhaps poor) quality of the service or amount of time needed to show result to those promoted forums. Advertising takes a lot of effort; you can't just stick to one forum/website and gain various content, audience, and clicks.
It isn't that it's a "bad" genre. Moreso, it's an overused genre and there are so many of those types of forums out there. I hardly see any graphic and web design only forums or forums based on specific games, movies, or televisions shows. Most of them now are promotion, webmaster, or admin forums that offer services to the users. Personally, I think you should do something completely original and different and steer clear from the admin/promotion forums.
As others have said, you're only setting yourself up for failure by attempting to enter the promotion market. In this case, numbers matter a whole lot.
Don't want to be a part of that, but still want to run a successful forum? Consider a particular hobby or interest that moves you, and expand on it. You could always combine certain aspects of promotion forums, provided that your members are more than just regular forum users.
