Where does the future lie for new promotion forums?

[Murder he Wrote]

Whilst doing my daily rounds today, I stumbled across a member who had "New Promotion Forum - Coming very soon" in their signature.

"What a surprise" - I thought.

It seems that week in, week out somewhere or other a new promotion forum is popping up somewhere or other, normally on some free host, using the same skin as about 1,000 other forums and offering all of the usual services you'd expect to see on a promotion forum (Packages, Reviews, Graphics, Etc.).

In the past, people have said things along the lines of "It can be done with the right leadership" or "If they can think of unique services it will be a success". But really, can it?

When the leading promotion forums were started, "Promotion forums" weren't really that well known; and as far as I'm aware ForumPromotion wad the first Promotion Forum to appear anywhere near the freeforums.org network (where FP started off). This gave the board a huge advantage, in that everyone wanted to be part of a unique community, which offered something that hadn't really been done before.

So what has that got to do with new promotion forums? Well, unlike FP and other big promotion forums who started up as one of a kind, new promotion forums rely on promoting on other promotion forums...(wow, that's a lot of "promotion")....to get their members. So in the end, you end up with a small ring of promotion forums, all promoting each other. So there's problem #1, new promotion forums are unable to lure members away from an already established community - to a new community that offers the same services and discussion areas.

Like I said, some say new promotion forums can be successful so long as they're unique, but the Second problem is..."Just how unique can you make your promotion forum". Because most people start up on free hosts, there just isn't the platform to introduce unique services. Our most recent service (Featured forum) is one of a kind and took a long time for the initial idea to come out, and then even longer researching how to code it, and then actually coding it. Surely you would think if there was a successful service that would monopolise all promotion forums it would have already been done?

I'm not sure about you guys, but the way I see it people see the success of forums such as ourselves and think "If I offer all the stuff they do, maybe I can run a popular forum". Then of course, 2 weeks down the line when they've only managed to accumulate 200 posts the forum closes for "personal reasons" and there's a long list of credits and thank you's to the community that didn't really get off the ground.

Looking back, I'm not too sure whether this is a question or a rant.

Either way, what's your opinion on the future of new promotion forums? Do they stand a chance against the big names?

Discuss.

 

[Pixel Pirate]

The current well established ones will surely survive, but new ones that are coming out are just ruining for the established ones. Soon the idea of creating a new promotion forum will die out, as long as the well established ones stay up.

 

[Twisted Fairytale]

Ill say this from experience... To get a Promotion Forum off of the ground, you have to offer something that no one else does. That, or be very good at a certian service..

I would type more, but my finger is burnt..

 

[Vader]

I would agree. As I just purchased one from a member here and got no idea how to run it. Have thought about making it more of a target forum honing in on one certian type of forum or forums.

 

[Cosmic]

This reminds me of a literature forum I am a member of. The forum was filled with two main groups, the serious writers who write excellent pieces and are just one or two tiers below publication, and then there are the fan-fiction writers who write really bad "comedy" pieces which are filled with the lowest level of 'bathroom jokes' and other sorts of immature humor. I was, and still am, of the first of those groups, the better ones.

The connection here is that the better writers would see the popularity of some of the good stories made by the better ones and make extremely unoriginal recreations of the stories. They would basically create a thousand different stories which were very similar to a single good one, which degraded their own skill and even the orriginallity of the original piece. As you can see, these less skilled people see the wonderful forums like this one and decide to make copies of it, almsot like "Fanfics" or retellings.

 

[Antarctic]

If there are Promotion forums like FP or FA around, 90% of the time, new ones won't survive, sure, they will last a few months, but if you are looking to advertise your forum, would you rather go to a large forum with lots of members and posts or one that has a few hundred posts and a few members, which do you think will provide you with better promotion?

 

[hcfwesker]

Alot people get the wrong idea. They want a popular forum, and see that ad forums draw in a crowd, almost every admin who has a forum, will join. But, they don't understand, it doesn't work like that.

It takes months and months of getting the word as, just the same as any forum, and keeping things fresh, unique, and members getting results from using their ad forum.

Ad forums are just becoming more and more popular because of the they do get more members and posts; but once a member realizes there'snot much to gain from the newer ad forums; they will move on, and stay with the more succesful ones.

 

[katy perry is hot]

Re:

Ill say this from experience... To get a Promotion Forum off of the ground, you have to offer something that no one else does. That, or be very good at a certian service..

I would type more, but my finger is burnt..

I think you should put sunblock on your fingers now too.. man the sun gets you so easily!!

Okay, back on topic:

I don't think any new promotion forums are going to succeed.. the ones that have tons of active members and paid domain, etc. are the ones that will succeed, it seems people just sprout up promotion forums overnight hoping it will succeed... sure, it will get a ton of members and posts, but that's it.
It's likely that someone finding a new promotion forum will join, put their site in your Advertise board, request a package, then sign off forever and never visit the site again.

 

[Cosmic]

Re: Re:

Ill say this from experience... To get a Promotion Forum off of the ground, you have to offer something that no one else does. That, or be very good at a certian service..

I would type more, but my finger is burnt..

I think you should put sunblock on your fingers now too.. man the sun gets you so easily!!

Okay, back on topic:

I don't think any new promotion forums are going to succeed.. the ones that have tons of active members and paid domain, etc. are the ones that will succeed, it seems people just sprout up promotion forums overnight hoping it will succeed... sure, it will get a ton of members and posts, but that's it.
It's likely that someone finding a new promotion forum will join, put their site in your Advertise board, request a package, then sign off forever and never visit the site again.

You are very correct.

 

[agentmanningctu]

Well, duh! Irviding is always very correct.

 

[spyka]

I don't think it has much to do with services but rather activity.

You may have wonderful unique servcies, but if you only get 10 unique visitors a day, what's the point in members using them?

This in turn leads to a catch 22 situation: You need activity to attract new members and need new members to attract activity

The problem is people give up too easily, I have a tonne of free forum promotion sites in my bookmarks and 90%+ of them are closed down. It seems if you don't get 1,000 posts overnight people give up!

 

[FWhite]

This same statement can also apply to various other niches such as ones I am currently involved in (webmaster blogs, webmaster forums, arcade sites).

 

[Ascent]

No new promotion forum is going to enter success. Period.

Why?

They feed off the bigger ones. Why do you see everybody advertising their promotion forum here? Hell, if you think about it, new promotion forums only HELP the bigger promotion forums like FP and FA. It helps them because once a member from there views an advertisement for FP / FA, it's guaranteed he/she will join. I honestly don't see the reason for making promotion forums at all. It's now complete waste of time, you really can't earn any revenue, and it's already been saturated with competition. I'm only registered on FP and FA, because simply put, those are the only two worth being a member on.

Sure, maybe there's a few other ones with some activity, but why would you want to register on a cocked down forum on some crappy free host with 110% less traffic there when frankly, 90% of the members there are already registered on FP / FA?

That being said, FP & FA are currently the big guys. I'd like to see who eventually wins.

 

[FWhite]

Re:

That being said, FP & FA are currently the big guys. I'd like to see who eventually wins.

If you compare both FP and FA, FP is pretty much the top dog. If you look for quality over quantity, FP is the winner. FA is nice and all, but the forum is 95% garbage posts.

 

[Ascent]

Re: Re:

That being said, FP & FA are currently the big guys. I'd like to see who eventually wins.

If you compare both FP and FA, FP is pretty much the top dog. If you look for quality over quantity, FP is the winner. FA is nice and all, but the forum is 95% garbage posts.

I agree. 😀 I'd choose FP over FA anyday. I also just noticed FP has surpassed FA in the # of overall posts.

 

[FWhite]

Re: Re:

I agree. 😀 I'd choose FP over FA anyday. I also just noticed FP has surpassed FA in the # of overall posts.

FP has always surpassed FA in the amount of posts, both quality and quantity. 😎

 

[Mike]

I do think some promotion forums could be successful, i won't go mentioning any forums, but i know of one that has a strong active member base and a good community feel to it, i think if the admin's stick to it it will end up larger 🙂 So many promotion close so often, i've lost interest in joining new ones now as 80% of the time they will close, good work for those admins that do their best and stick to it though

As for the whole FP/FA situation, it comes up all the time and can come down to personal opinion, but let me just say - the stats just go to show 😛

 

[Nuke]

I'm thinking of making my board for advertising and war to get more members, since we're slowly dying due to the fact that so many people are hippys who hate war.

 

[gqgk]

Re:

I'm thinking of making my board for advertising and war to get more members, since we're slowly dying due to the fact that so many people are hippys who hate war.

yeah. well sometimes war is a necessary thing. it keeps people in check. not everyone will follow rules and will choose peace over violence and they wont listen to negotiation either. so the only other way is by force. some people dont agree tho

 

[Callum93]

Well my thoughts on this is that I don't think it's impossible to have a successful promotion forum now. It's just that most of the new ones are free hosted and/or the admins are noobs. Or alternatively, the admins give up after a while and the board closes down. I gave up on Forum Resources twice because of how difficult it was to manage the services and keep them up to date.

However I think if someone has passion, commitment, creativity and then puts money into a promotion forum they have a chance of succeeding. It's just most people don't do that and to be honest, I didn't commit/have much passion for Forum Resources the second time after the first few days and the same has to be said for the first time it opened, I lost interest after a while. It's mainly about commitment/being bothered. If people can do that, there IS a future for promotion forums. There is no rule defined saying only 2 promotion forums (FP/FA) can establish themselves and be successful.