Nonactive community

Allenafaith

Allenafaith

Adrenaline Junkie - Community Team Leader
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So, if you're running a forum for a really long time and you're putting a lot of work and money into it and it doesn't get active, what should you do? Do you give up, sell it, or keep working hard?

I actually have a Forum, I put a lot of time into it and it never got active, though. Now, it's just sitting there. XD
 
Yep, Same here with baysideGamers. I spent hours on end and money put into the website for almost 2 years now. Started off with SMF then IPB.

I keep on going and going and going and just not growing and not getting what I like to see the website becomes. Many times I thought about giving up as it's putting myself down and making me feel bad in me to see this happening.

Answer that I'm not given up and I'm going to keep on going and going and going. even it's hard to keep it going with on money coming in.
 
That's a tough one. We always knew that Sakuga City would work, at least as a small community since the core of it is 14 years old. YES, absolutely I still had to work to get it active and try and attract in new blood. I've made over 1,000 posts on the site myself and believe it or not, I wasn't over-inflating things, just posting genuine replies to topics.

You need a lot of time. I found that if I go inactive for any period of time, so does the forum because I'm the admin who's most visible. The others do post too when they have time, one of them is our coder, so he could be busy with backend... but it's scary how much activity can depend on even one person kicking life back in.

I've posted here for packages as well at times when it needed a kick up the butt. I don't think it's ever easy. ^^

If it hadn't worked, we'd probably have stopped since it does cost money to run. Xenforo license, add-ons just to get the place running smoothly, and we are outgrowing the damn server again I think. We are running it on money given by the membership though, so admins aren't paying for it.
 
Have you tried working on your SEO? Personally, I think you shouldn't give up and work more on the marketing side.
 
In my exp, few niche forums take time to evolve. It's better to wait till a year before giving it up.
 
I wouldn't give up unless it's been years (like 3+) and the forum still shows no sign of improvement or has low activity, even after trying different methods and working on SEO. I'm want to give it a shot definitely, but if it's been years I wouldn't see things improving. I can see a forum not being too active for a 1, 2 even 3 years since it does take time to get established and gain a solid member base but beyond that the forum's probably never going to take off. It could flop for many reasons... the niche is too saturated, certain policies, nothing's drawing guests into the forum, weak promotion/advertising, etc. I'd see that as time to call it quits and probably just close the forum down. You could sell but most buyers like to see a forum be at least semi active.
 
OES said:
Well, that's encouraging. I've planned to give up after 3 months if I don't see progress :banghead:
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I'm the guy who never gives up.I keep on going
 
Shannon Apple said:
That's a tough one. We always knew that Sakuga City would work, at least as a small community since the core of it is 14 years old. YES, absolutely I still had to work to get it active and try and attract in new blood. I've made over 1,000 posts on the site myself and believe it or not, I wasn't over-inflating things, just posting genuine replies to topics.

You need a lot of time. I found that if I go inactive for any period of time, so does the forum because I'm the admin who's most visible. The others do post too when they have time, one of them is our coder, so he could be busy with backend... but it's scary how much activity can depend on even one person kicking life back in.

I've posted here for packages as well at times when it needed a kick up the butt. I don't think it's ever easy. ^^

If it hadn't worked, we'd probably have stopped since it does cost money to run. Xenforo license, add-ons just to get the place running smoothly, and we are outgrowing the damn server again I think. We are running it on money given by the membership though, so admins aren't paying for it.
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I also had a problem with keeping active staff and I really didn't have the time to be active like 24/7. It takes so much. XD
 
It's quite unreasonable to expect a new forum to get anywhere, if you don't already have a significant group of people ready to commit to it from the beginning. Forums aren't an "If you build it, they will come" sort of thing, unless you're doing something extremely unique.
 
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I think it's hard to get the ground running from the start. I'd say it's harder to run a site with a non active community than a brand new one. Keep working hard at I'd say, because if you give up after a week it probably shows you don't have an understanding on how to run a proper forum.
 
I'm used to having no active staff, hired three two left and one is still an staff but never active. Yeah real life they have also but I just work by myself now
 
The best way to ensure that you will have the energy to keep running a forum is to run a forum centered around something that you really enjoy. For example, my new forum is going to be centered around nostalgia, games, princesses, and other silly stuff.
 
You need to be active on the forum yourself, for starters. Lead by example, do post exchanges, and lot's of promotion to attract members interested in your niche. You need to hustle, and grind hard. Make sure your forum is unique, and offers alot of content that'll interest your community.
 
it can be hard, I'm active everyday and only FP makes me to keep active of not being boring
 
I'm pretty sure that I've posted on forums more over the past few weeks than I had for years before that. XD
 
Keep working on it, but also keep in mind that if your niche is overused and done much better elsewhere, then chances are that you're not going to succeed. I personally never ran a forum on general discussions, promotions, and the like. Gaming is probably the worst "niche" for any forum, because Discord has pretty much killed most of them off.

You just have to ask yourself, while taking the perspective of a random visitor who just found your forum, if you would feel compelled to register. Why register to yet another forum with the same stuff discussed as the last one? What are you going to get out of this forum?
 
agree above but you have to take in also that people like myself who runs an forum want to run what they are good at and enjoyed at doing. Like myself in a gaming community
 
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