I see other Star Wars forums as rivals. It's like a fast food business. Mc. Donalds and Burger King. Both selling the same thing (food), but with different things and trying to attract the same thing; customers.
There were 2 major Star Wars forums that rivaled with mine, but they died (well, 1 of them is still parshally active..but barely)
Provided a forum has a similar theme to mine I would rather look through the forums or websites and decide whether they meet up with my standards before contacting them for an affiliate exchange.
By standards I mean the general look of the forum. The general attitude of the staff.
Nu-nu, not saying that's why forums are made. I'm saying over time, as you discover more forums that have the same concept as yours, it becomes a competition.
Not really yet, I try to learn from them though. If tehy are more successful than me I want to see what is working ofr them and see how to apply it my own way.
Never rivals, actually just the opposite if you play your cards right. You should take some of your older, well thought out posts and post them on your rivals site (as long as they allow signature link advertising). Not only will the members there read it, associate it with you, and possibly join your site... but pending you gave it enough time for google to index it, copying word for word could actually hurt their google rank. Plus posting on an associated forum raises your google rank as long as you use the appropriate anchor text.
I used to have a big rivalry with two other forums, then I realised that having three forums doing the exact same thing was pointless and stupid. We all had the same mission - to help young writers. We began working together and now I'm discussing a merge with one of them. 🙂 Glad that stupidity is over.
I'm not fussed over who's forum is better than who's. That used to really bother me which made my quit my forum because of the competition end of things. But heck, there are loads of general chat forums out there, and mine just basically got added to the mix. I just sit back, run my forum and have fun while doing so. It's not like we're discussing anything serious. Just a place to sit back and relax, so I just enjoy it while I can.
Yes, I see more established forums with similar topics to mine as rivals, but at this point in time I doubt they see mine as a rival if they even know about it. Soon I'll show them though! :lol:
