How do you acquire a user base?

[rickyrolly]

Lots of people have forums littered with bots and such. How do you gain a real following? My website is not really ready for a release and such, so I’m not worried. I’m just wondering how you all did it when you started? Did it naturally happen over time? Did you advertise?

What would be some tips for new forum owners that you would suggest or advise?

 

[philmckrackon]

A long time ago @VB 3.5 time I could not find a forum dedicated to my hobby that I love best, restoring and building Jeep CJs. I then started my own site because it was unique.
It has been years but through a lot of work and time it is #1 on Google search for "Jeep CJ forum" and #4 (two of which are Wikipedia and a paid player) for "Jeep CJ".
I have never advertised but just supplied good information that many other sites and locations link to. Those back links are vital for rankings.
There are many larger and busier forums than mine but I am very happy with what I have.
Congratulations on starting soon.

 

[briansol]

Its REAL hard to start today. Unless you're the first or the first with good content in a new niche, it's probably never going to be 'the one'.
With conglomerates buying domains the day before the public hears of things, it's hard to compete with 'newwidgetforums.com' was started yesterday by someone else and stuffed it with filler from paid editors.

I too started 27 years ago. Thanks for making me feel old. 1999. Things were different then. Like above, The sites that existed were not what my focus area was. I found a gap and filled it with content i made from stuff I was doing.

I also filled a 'place to go to' when another board had a mass exodus because of a b-dag admin that ran everyone off. I offered sanctuary and promised not to mod like that guy did.

If you aren't doing it, don't have someone on staff who's doing it, posting the pics/content/how-tos of doing it, you're over before you start.

If you can share what you are doing - and what your doing is different than the other guys - you MIGHT have a chance if there's enough volume of people who actually search for stuff and not just go to facebook groups.

It's hard, because I do it too. my furnace died. I went to facebook, joined an hvac group, made a post, got 2 replies instantly, fixed my issue, and was done with the group. I never even bothered to consider a forum to be honest. It's a one-off hit for me. Hopefully the furnace runs for a few more years without my help.

I'm not going to help another home owner with a furnace problem, ever. I'm not qualified - and i don't want to.

You need to have people who know their stuff and can lead to help others to start getting traction.

 

[FTL]

A lot is made about having a unique selling point whether it's in business or forums. While that certainly helps, it's not critical. Doing something common, but in a way that people like eg nice presentation, engaging characters, whatever, will also attract customers or users. This is why there's so many me-too businesses that are doing well. While starting up any kind of forum these days is an exercise in self inflicted pain (don't I know it) it can still work without a USP. The fact that every forum has its own unique feel can be enough of a USP to make it work.

 

[JamesBrown]

What would be some tips for new forum owners that you would suggest or advise?

My twopenneth.

Starting a new forum now is much harder than it used to be, mostly because you’re competing with the lazy convenience of Facebook groups, Reddit, Discord, and so on. So you can’t just knock a forum up because a topic “seems popular”. That just won’t work today, unless you get especially lucky with the niche.

The single biggest requirement, I’d say, is genuine passion. If you don’t care enough to live and breathe the niche, you’ll run out of steam long before the forum reaches critical mass.

Forums take time, repetition, and dogged, stubborn consistency. Without that driving passion, it’s basically a slow-motion failure, and before too long; you’ll be talking to yourself, or hiring some of those bots you mentioned.

Your forum has to be more than “a place to chat”. The chat comes later. It needs to become the best information hub in the niche. That means:

• Publishing genuinely useful articles, guides, FAQs, and evergreen resources (not bot fluff).
• Staying on top of news, releases, and developments in your niche, so Facebook groups are discussing your content.
• Posting quickly enough that when people are buzzing about something in Facebook groups, your forum already has the thread, the explainer, the resource, the checklist, or the “here’s what you need to know” summary. That's the sort of thing people will link to in those Faceache groups.

In other words, at the beginning you’re not building “a forum”. You’re building a friendly, go-to reference site for that niche community. Just be aware that the 'forum' is the social layer and information exchange on top or your reference site. Eventually, people will join up and join in and you have your community. That's when the work really starts!

 

[Suzanne O]

Get your friends involved.
Base it on your favourite sport or hobby
For example your friends might like model trains base it on that

 

[Wildcat Media]

I too started 27 years ago. Thanks for making me feel old. 1999.

Youngster. I'm not too far beyond that however--I started with a "guestbook" script, and in 1997 set up one of my first forums using WebBBS, which was a spinoff of wwwboard (from a site called, I think, Matt's Scripts?). But I had moderated a CompuServe forum (with others) as a "sysop" prior to that. (A "wizop" was roughly equivalent to an admin, and only the forum owners had that capability.)

It's hard to believe next year in January, I'll have a 30 year old Forum. And the largest I admin will be 25 years old.

Starting a new forum now is much harder than it used to be, mostly because you’re competing with the lazy convenience of Facebook groups, Reddit, Discord, and so on. So you can’t just knock a forum up because a topic “seems popular”. That just won’t work today, unless you get especially lucky with the niche.

Agreed. Some niches can still take off, especially those that can offer some sanity and intelligence beyond what social media and Reddit offer, but it takes a forum admin passion to run it, and enough users disgusted with social media to want to visit.

That is actually key to the longevity of the forums I operate as well as other long-running forums I use as a visitor. It's not social media, and that's why we like it. We avoid the trolls, flamers, and members who can barely write a sentence. There is far more intelligent conversation on forums than any social media, in the niches I either admin or use as a visitor.

Regardless, it takes a lot of time to grow a membership base. This has always been the case. And self-promotion without advertising, and without coming across as a spammer, is much more difficult today than it used to be.