Basic Stages of Forum Growth

[Rich Edmonds]

You really can't stage growth, there are so many factors involved:
- Advertising: How much advertising they do per week, where they advertise and how they come about it.
- Posting packages and other services: How many of these they take on and how frequently.
- Post exchanges: These are becoming good ways to gain posts and some Admins still don't use them or don't use them enough.
- The theme: The theme of the forum can effect if a member will register or not (likes and dislikes).
- Design/Community feel - The look of the forum can divert potential members and also the feel of the community upon landing on the index.
- Pre launch Hype - depending on how popular the Admin himself/herself is around other active forums, the hype can be little or huge, this can alter how many members register on opening day and few days after.
- Etc.

Its a nice guide and well written, listing some good points, but it's all down to the forum and Staff.

 

[HomerSPC]

My forum does not follow this at all. A year old, couple active posters, 1-2 members joining a week if lucky.

Rok: My forum is one of the odd ones out. -roll-

 

[Mudjosh]

Also true, but it's based on how much and where you advertise- which is the key resource to acknowledge. If you advertise and promote daily on Forum Promotion (for instance), then your forum's growth should be similar to the stages listed in this thread. However, there's one minor setback that can effect everything and that is the topic of the forum. Not all users like the same thing, and if you have a forum about tables (random choice), then your forum is getting nowhere because no one is obviously interested in discussion about tables. The only members and activity you'd get, if your forum's topic is about tables, is from exchangements and other sources like packages. Basically, you went downhill from when you first decided to create a forum about tables.

Ok.. Lets say my forum is about tables.. The forum never had a gradual growth.. Or steps. It is always just a mixture of all the steps listed.

My Tables forum has great staff. a pr of 2 (meaning there is advertising) has google adwords (With around 5 clicks a day) and more.

It has a decent layout.. has scored a high review here and at theadminzone (taz).

And it is advertised heavily in other table forums in the way of signatures. (as in a member with 100 posts has the link as their signature.. hence the pagerank)

----

The forum has always had a mixture of all those characteristics.. In fact, when it was only 3 months old, it was getting around 2 members a day at least.. It got adv. hosting (lunarpages) and it's own domain and though members stayed and there was a redirect in place, members joining declined sharply..

After a year, it is just now picking back up to up to 3 members a day.

Explain away..

 

[Tolken]

Nice write up I must say.

 

[gqgk]

yeah. its a nice guide. i just hope my forum stays ahead of schedule!

 

[The-Wall]

My forum is 4 weeks old today (28days) and I have 150 members so far and about 40 of them are on daily. Still a lot of hard work everyday trying to promote and find things to make the forum better.

The hardest thing is to make some members post when they join, I seem to have a lot that haven't posted yet but I'll keep at it and they my come back.

 

[Rok]

The key behind this guide is to get you guys promoting everyday and move along as the guide states. It's basically improving you and your forum.

 

[gqgk]

yeah. it helps me set goals. i'm trying to beat everything ahead of schedule to make sure i keep growing and everything

 

[Rok]

Okay, good luck! Gaming forums do get pretty far.

 

[gqgk]

yeah. i think we're actually progressing almost a full step ahead, which i dont know if thats good or bad because we have one slow day and people freak out because we got the amount of posts a forum this old should get lol

 

[epick]

Awesome, points you have made for new forum owners i +REP!

 

[Rok]

Wow, thanks a lot. 😀

 

[Rok]

Anyone else find this information useful?