How much traffic needed for launching forum?

[Peter-Jan]

Hi,

How much daily traffic would you recommend to have on a Wordpress blog before launching a forum?

Please include whether you are talking about uniques per day, page impressions, average comments per blog post, % returning visitors, ...

I was personally thinking 500 uniques per day would be a minimum?

Thanks!

 

[Cip]

Hi and welcome to XenForo, Peter-Jan!

It all depends on your idea of how people should interact with each other on the forum. If you are using the forum mostly for discussions regarding blog posts then perhaps you would like a greater user base than if you allow freestyle discussions on the general topic of the blog.

When it comes to estimating the amount of users you'll receive I think that the only proper way to find out is to launch it and see where it goes from there. If you're afraid that the forum wont be used excessively then I recommend that you keep the amount of boards on the low.

 

[Onimua]

It would depend on whether a forum is suitable for your site or not. Just because it has a lot of traffic doesn't mean it should have a forum; clearly the currently formula is working, so perhaps you shouldn't change that.

It's something you have to be careful with implementing, and I don't think it should really be based on how much traffic you're getting but how you and your users could benefit from using it.

 

[Jethro]

A man and his dog, whatever works for you. Are readers asking for forums?

 

[Moses]

I had a lot less than 100 uniques a day when the forums were first launched, and find there is not a huge overlap between forum users and blog users.
You'll find yourself promoting the forum in different places, despite having substantial blog traffic.

 

[Peter-Jan]

A man and his dog, whatever works for you. Are readers asking for forums?

I haven't launched the blog yet, the domain transfer is still in progress.

The domain I bought is a premium one which will most likely explode in search traffic for its name due to an innovation, so I'm just asking as I don't want to launch a failed forum and dilute the domain brand.

The 'incumbent' keyword that 'my' new keyword will (partly, probably and eventually) replace currently gets 670K monthly searches, so it makes more sense for me to wait a bit more and lay a better foundation in blog posts.

Thanks for the answers!