Forum Niche Testing?

[Nous]

Do you guys ever do a quick market test for your forum before launch? Kind of like to gauge the likelihood of the forums success?

I've had a few forum ideas in mind other than the one I am currently working on (which is more of a hobby forum) and was thinking of ways to test the waters before I invest my time and money to launch a forum just to see it die.

Would appreciate you 2 cents on how you would test a forum niche before launching or starting a forum.

 

[TradingCardMakers]

Do you guys ever do a quick market test for your forum before launch? Kind of like to gauge the likelihood of the forums success?

I've had a few forum ideas in mind other than the one I am currently working on (which is more of a hobby forum) and was thinking of ways to test the waters before I invest my time and money to launch a forum just to see it die.

Would appreciate you 2 cents on how you would test a forum niche before launching or starting a forum.

First and fore most any forums you work on will take dedication and motivation and long-term work. don't expect a over night success but it can happen.

Research is key before launching anything if you feel like you can do it and not give up on it then do it.

 

[Katrina]

I didn't do any forum testing but I did research to see who my competitors would be.

 

[Carlos X]

I have. Many times.

The thing is, always have a plan B ready.

Fortunately, I already had a few sites that fed traffic and had cash flow.

On top of that, I purchased a few general gaming forums, merged them together. Its now where "plan B" goes in case one site fails - that's where it goes.

In the past, I purchased a PSVita Forum. What I did was launch test niches and merged it there. DMC Forums, BF1 Forums, BF5 Forums, Exodus Forums were all test sites. My rule of thumb is this: If the forum does not grow fast enough in one year, it gets merged into another forum. Some acquisitions like a Destiny forum, and Battlefront forum broke those rules because they were bigger databases, but even i have my limits. If I need to free up a license, I kill the website with the lowest traffic. SwitchForum is the only one that completely broke those rules. I purchased a Nintendo forum from Cameron - yes, the current owner of FP. Its now in SwitchForum.

Call of Duty Forum acquisitions were no-brainers. They are immediately merged into CoDForums. I built not one, not two, but 4 niche forums around Call of Duty.

CoDForums is my most successful site. And it can only go up from here.

 

[Nous]

@TradingCardMakers Yeh well that is true as well. Overnight success is never a thing and everything does take time. The research is the thing I am asking about. It's always good to know if the forum is viable before investing all that time and energy into it.

@Lämmchen Yeh that is one way as well, always know who you will be up against.

@Carlos X Ofcourse if you are running multiple forum sites and if one doesn't work just pull the plug on it. Thats great to hear the you found your success on CoDForums. But how do you determine if the forum just isn't working? Sometimes it maybe lack of advertisement or engagement that makes the forum unsuccessful?

 

[Page]

Nothing wrong with just going ahead without testing and learning from the mistakes and fixing them with the help of the community that you may have 😉 ANd as the weeks and years go along, you change and update and improve over time

 

[Carlos X]

@Carlos X Ofcourse if you are running multiple forum sites and if one doesn't work just pull the plug on it. Thats great to hear the you found your success on CoDForums. But how do you determine if the forum just isn't working? Sometimes it maybe lack of advertisement or engagement that makes the forum unsuccessful?

I'll give some examples here. I'm currently on phone, so pardon me if this is short or whatever. I had a whole post written, my dumbass pressed back. But ill try remembering what I said...

BFI Forum - It was successful for a while. This dumbfounded and still dumbfounds me today. Anyway, I purchased BF5Forum, because of rumors and leaks. But the minute I saw the marketing materials for a possible "Battlefield 1," I took a minute to think about the strategy I was going to do this. I purchased all available domains to become the first and the only Battlefield 1 Forum. I used "BF1 Forum" as board name, "Battlefield 1 Forums" as SEO. It was successful until people purchased the game and realized how poorly balanced the game was. The traffic was consistent until the month after the game was released. The traffic to posts/members statistics were unbalanced, but in saying that it was my most successful site for a site I built from scratch. I purchased a database yeah, but it's not relevant to the subject at hand. However, from that perch, the post/members growth was not consistent. My official announcement is here.

TitanFall 2 Forums - This also dumbfounds me, so weird. So the traffic was okay, the posts-to-members ratio is low, but i see traffic. However in this case i was competing against another TitanFall Forum. The board name this time matches the actual domain, so... I didn't have to worry about SEO this time. Ready for the plot twist?

TWO THOUSAND FOLLOWERS ON FACEBOOK. *facepalms* I did post links to the page, but none of them registered! AGH.

That made me confused to no end. Especially with a beautiful skin. My official announcement is here.

BF5Forum - Now this one makes sense. It has nothing to do with me this time. Now, keep in mind, I already merged the old BF5 Forum into DestroyRepeat, so I had to start from scratch. I did everything as I have done before. "BF5 Forum" board name, and "Battlefield 5 Forums" as SEO. Traffic was consistent until reveal trailer. Then, afterwards stupid EA went woke with their messaging. So, I lost potential traffic, members, and so on and forth. This one, I completely understood.

DMC Forums - In this case it was a mixed bag. Traffic was there, but it was not able to capture the #1 page rank because Devilmaycry.org already ranks #1 for the "Devil May Cry Forums" keyword despite the domain being different.