Before I started my general chat forum, I felt a driving need to own a forum where my friends could hang out and we could talk about things we wanted. One of my favorite general chat forums had shut down and another had lost many of it's members. Most of my online friends were there and after that we lost contact. I wanted a general chat forum to have a common meeting ground. Realisitcally, a general chat forum is not the best niche for a forum as there are so many forums. Still, I felt like it was the thing I needed to do. I didn't think about whether or not the forum would earn money; that was secondary. I didn't even monetize with Adsense until four months after the forum opened and then only to guests and not members.
Just wondering if it's the same for others who start forums in overly populated niches such as general chat; gamer forums or SEO related forums where the competition is intense and there is little chance of ever making the forum big.
Is it foolish to start such a forum in an overly saturated niche? Or, should you start it anyway, out of love and not really be concerned about the money potential of the forum and whether or not it would succeed?
My approach is to remain as aggressive as possible. Keep doing whatever it takes to continue to grow, and devour everything in your path, which may or may not include other forums (evil I know, but business is war!). The general chat niche may be overcrowded, but that just leaves room for true leaders to emerge, which is better than having a less popular niche if you ask me.
All I know is, hard work pays off, so no matter what keep adding value to your site. And don't worry about the money, if that is your only focus you will likely not see the results you want until you sell the site.
No forum has no chance. And while it may not be the biggest site ever, any forum has the potential to at least be a fun, interesting, meaningful community with lots of members and activity.
A forum can always succeeded its the amount of effort the owner puts into the forum. sadly now days the only way you can get allot of posts is to get post exchanges you don't see many people just signing up because their interested. but to be honest i'd rather my forum not be HUGE because then the community isn't as friendly and spam bots will come and try to advertise. also you'd have members being trolls
Even the half chances should be taken and its fun if you have no chance at all. I've just posted a new forum here. I'm a new member here. I don't wanna think about the outcome. I did what i had to and wanted to do. SEO is all about aggressiveness with a subtle approach. If you want to do it, you should do it.. :great:
As long as the forum owner is dedicated, every forum as a chance! It will take a lot of hard work, especially for those trying to launch into over-saturated forum niches.
I never built a forum with any intention related to money or SEO, lol. My most successful forum was a forum for fans of a specific singer. I made it simply because I wanted to have a place where fellow fans could gather and talk and update ourselves with latest news aside from doing fun things. I did hope it would grow big, but most important was to have fun. Therefore, niche doesn't matter, SEO doesn't matter, revenue doesn't matter.
I think online communities can be considered hobby. So to me, good if it can bring income, but that's the least priority while building/getting involved in one.
i have a simple answer;
do it if you want to even though you know in the back of your head it PROBABLY won't become succesful
don't do it , if you feel like its gonna be a huge waste of your time in the end, because all you really wanted is a forum that would became popular and loved by many people
...because its indeed really hard to get somewhere if you start a forum about something thats been going on for so long , that you basically already can find tons of other forums about the exact same subject
