Forum Growth Patterns

[Darknite]

Hello FP Users!

I wanted to ask experienced forum owners about the "typical" growth of forums.

In terms of ballpark figures:

* What is the approximate "critical mass" of post/members before a forum is "self reliant" (i.e. no post exchange, paid posting, self posting, etc)?

* What are the approximate number of posts/forum size before you get organic posters?

* Are there recognisable "stages" that a typically successful forum goes through?

Thanks in advanced, looking forward to the advice.

 

[Mik.]

Well it all depends on your forum (how it looks, what it offers, how unique it is). Every characteristic of your forum plays an important role on it being driven on it's own. It can take days, months or even years. There are forums that have been opened for years and their forum is still not "self reliant."

I hope I answered your question.

 

[Eternal]

I agree with Rocky, different forums grow at different rates because of how different they can be. If its something more unique you may get more members quickly, if you start a forum like a gaming forum you will have to think of something that will keep members coming because there are so many gaming forums is out there.

 

[Darthmaul]

Well it all depends on your forum (how it looks, what it offers, how unique it is). Every characteristic of your forum plays an important role on it being driven on it's own. It can take days, months or even years. There are forums that have been opened for years and their forum is still not "self reliant."

I hope I answered your question.

Said perfectly well. My forum took quite a bit to do well, and I still have to work with it to keep it going. Forum ownership is a constant battle :great:

 

[CyberFreak]

It all depends on many factors and the info needed varies massively. In terms of your site becoming "self reliant", it took us years with this forum. We haven't promoted this site for a long time apart from the occasional link here and there in a signature for example. Most of our members come from search engines and word of mouth from other members. If it wasn't for the fact we get so much traffic from Google then we would be still promoting this site so the size of the forum is irrelevant in this matter in my opinion. You need to think about where these members would be coming from in order to make your forum "self reliant" and that will help you judge when your forum will become "self reliant". If you will rely on search engines, your forum will be "self reliant" when you rank highly for main keywords.