One year on the road?

[DarkRaven]

So my forum will be one year on the road in late February. I'm just trying to figure out what sort of statistics I should have at that stage. At the moment I've got 400 members and over 41k posts.

Can anyone tell me what is "normal" for a forum at this stage?

 

[David]

Can anyone tell me what is "normal" for a forum at this stage?

But what does "normal" mean? A general answer would be 'no' to your question.

You should consider your competition, rather than a general consensus. Consider well developed forums, and some that may have opened around your time.

I think a forum with 400 members and 40000 posts is doing great for less than one year, in your first year. Established forums tend to increase exponentially and rapidly, so you could see yourself with 250000 in two years time.

 

[Deleted member 4320]

For one year down the road I consider those stats really good, don't worry about what stats you should have, those stats are fine for one year, most forums don't get 41k posts till a couple of years.

 

[katy perry is hot]

Yup those are pretty above average stats for a forum that's a year old. How many active members do you have?

 

[DarkRaven]

A month? I said a year.

I'd say we have 50-60 members posting every once a fortnight and 20-30 that post reliably every day. That's all guesswork though, going on the top posters list, and the people I see in the "who's online now" box.

 

[Guardian]

I think that's good for a year even. Never been able to get a forum up that quickly. Good job!

 

[AnAccount]

That is pretty good for one year, to be honest. Some forums have done better while others have done worse, but it's obvious you've put a lot of hard work and effort into it so congratulations and keep up the good work!

 

[Nebulous]

I'd say thats pretty good for a forum that caters to a specific audience. Keep up the good work.

 

[Acorn]

400/40,000 is a strong start for a year. My current forum had less by the end of its first year. The challenge is maintaining that growth rate over time. I see a lot of boards that hit their heyday in the first couple years...and then just linger and slowly die away. They may survive many more years but not at a very high activity rate. Of course...not everyone WANTS a large forum. Some like those small close knit communities.

 

[hcfwesker]

Very good stats. Trust me, as long as the community and staff are still going, and no signs of slowing down, those numbers will soon grow exponentially.

Our first year was right at 300 members/30,000 posts (i myself thought those were pitiful stats, but was proboards so had to accept it 😛 ). But, not even 3 years old yet, and we're at 2,600 members/ almost 200,000 posts.

So, you're doing really good, and should expect much greater things to come. 🙂

 

[ShinLi]

There is no 'normal' or 'needed' statistics for a forum that's 1 year old. I find that people throw around their statistics way too much. But basically it is combination of your forum's genre, your community and activity. There's no 'good' or 'bad' statistics, every forum is different because the community/staff/genre is different.

 

[AnAccount]

400/40,000 is a strong start for a year. My current forum had less by the end of its first year. The challenge is maintaining that growth rate over time. I see a lot of boards that hit their heyday in the first couple years...and then just linger and slowly die away. They may survive many more years but not at a very high activity rate. Of course...not everyone WANTS a large forum. Some like those small close knit communities.

I was on a friend's forum that was like this. His started out like my current project did: Rather slow, with only a few people coming on and posting at a time. Then after a while it wasn't long before activity picked up, and it commenced being active for probably a year after its first year on the Net, and I think it was after either the first year or the second year that things really started slowing down again.

 

[Acorn]

Usually after two or three years {usually closer to two} a previously powerful forum may start to suffer a decline that it usually never picks back up out of to any level matching their heyday. It is easy to forget to pay attention to the boring stuff like your forum's stats over time. The two things to pay the most attention to are posts per day/members logged in per day. Out of those two, members on daily is probably the single most important. This is how many people are actively contributing to your community. Take a look at it every so often, like every month or so and look for trends. You will see fluctuation up and down which all forums have but what you want to look out for are trends of up or down or in general the same lasting a few months. If you have like 3 or 4 months of generally downward trends you need to act quick before it really starts to decay because once your forum is down it can sometimes be impossible to pull it back up, because during this time your forum may have new competition. If your forum is generally about the same level of activity over a long time that is fine if you are happy with its present size. A growing forum is great but the bigger it gets the harder it is to manage.

Numbers are often downplayed and get a bad rap but they cannot be argued with.

 

[Legacy]

It might take yeas for your forum to really kick it off. It depends on a lot of factors, but at your pace you are doing great. The bigger the site gets the faster the post count will get. The faster things will move the longer you get. You will not have a problem with things dying out if you keep working hard at it. The reason why things go down hill around 2 years is because the owners expect it to be a success. It is never stops. It is always work. THe forum I administrate just hit 400k. It was not to long ago we were at 300k. We are about 2 years old. Things happen differently.<br /><br />-- 13 Jan 2011, 21:11 --<br /><br />It might take yeas for your forum to really kick it off. It depends on a lot of factors, but at your pace you are doing great. The bigger the site gets the faster the post count will get. The faster things will move the longer you get. You will not have a problem with things dying out if you keep working hard at it. The reason why things go down hill around 2 years is because the owners expect it to be a success. It is never stops. It is always work. THe forum I administrate just hit 400k. It was not to long ago we were at 300k. We are about 2 years old. Things happen differently.

 

[packmule]

So my forum will be one year on the road in late February. I'm just trying to figure out what sort of statistics I should have at that stage. At the moment I've got 400 members and over 41k posts.

Can anyone tell me what is "normal" for a forum at this stage?

I'm not qualified to say what is "normal" but you're way ahead of where I was after my board turned one year old: I had about 40 members and just over 5100 posts. As long as you set realistic posting activity goals(and how many new members you'd like to acquire for your board) I think you'll do extremely well, likely even better than you're doing right now. :great: