is growing a board that hard?

I agree very much with craigiri's excellent analyis and DP's reminder on Unique Selling Point.

My additions:

Just want to second craigiri's point on what 'making a living' means. FaithFirst mentions 4K a month - if I take that as American dollars that's still substantial - over £2,500. You can keep a whole family on that very comfortably, including paying for a university course, holidays etc. To 'make a living' is more like £1,500/ $2,300 covering food, heating, lighting, , a roof, and a pc.

But as with any self employment that's still a lot of money to generate. SE income fluctuates a lot so never give up on steady work completely (if you have any) until the 3rd year starts.
Golden rule: a small part time income which is boringly reliable is actually worth twice its face value, compared to lumps and bits n pieces you never know are definitely arriving. Most success stories start with several years of doing part time grut work, or sex work.

My observation is that forums can be divided as
- a partner to an offline project or another online project
- pure forum site
The first is much stronger as the other activities feed the forum with the right kind of members, who are interested in the niche. They keep coming and each part of the whole project stimulates the other.
A pure forum site is going to have to be much more ruthless about its USP Unique Selling Point - why should I visit or join yours and not another similar one? What do you offer me that's better and different?

Nurture the few members you have. Never never say anything to imply you are disappointed in their small number or they will disappear. Speak of them as your first forum friends, founders, flatter them to hell and back.
Ask them if they want X Y and Z. Open questions what do you want are intimidating on their own, but add this.

Don't just put some posts out there on other boards, or some ads, and sit back. PR should be a regular duty while you're building - every month? every week? every day? do some PR!

Ask contributors on other sites if they would put a copy of a good post on yours - give compliments it's so good ...

Don;t batter members with ads. Target them sensitively so they get them a few at a time, and appropriate ones.
 
Brogan said:
Usually takes me a couple of weeks.

Edit: Disregard, I misread it as beard.
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Your not the only one ;)

(I thought that was a bit strange, so I re-read it. Then I though it didn't make sense, so I re-read it. Then I figured it out.)
 
I'm going to add the Zen Buddhist angle......

Myself, as well as some other successful web folks I know (maybe MOST of them), first did this as a Labor of Love and a way of sharing knowledge or community. If money..or even numbers of any kind...are the driving factors, I think the chances of success are less.

Sure, that's a general statement, but it relates to all those "get rich quick" or "get readers instantly" schemes all over the internet.

I've even had intelligent friends call me and brag about how they were following the web advice of "insert snake oil guys name here" and how they were gonna clean up.

I had the same experience back when I ran physical businesses. I once ran a fireplace/stove store and a new "hot" sales guy opened a couple stores and told me "Craig, by next year I'm going to make a clean million and then get out of this business".

Well, the only part of that which came true were the words "out of business".
;)
 
Lot of hard work and Fresh new content is what makes your board different from others . Depends on what kind of board you are running . It took me more then a year to complete 300 registrations but now everything is smooth and going great . Increasing members,activity as well as lot of Contents.
 
digitalpoint said:
Huh? Who are you? And why would I tell people how much I make? Do you tell random people on the Internet how much you make at your job? lol

Back to the original question, having a forum is really fundamentally no different than any other website... give people something they need and they can't get anywhere else, and you will have a much easier time gaining traction with your site. If you are just making a website and copying other website's ideas/offerings, it's going to be tough because you aren't offering anything unique.
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I PMed you back in the day. Shall I reply to the PM? Hope you were not offended by my sharing. Let me know and I will keep my mouth shut. Kinda realized I was sharing something from a private message after I was done the post. Totally sorry if that was not public info.
 
FaithFirst said:
I PMed you back in the day. Shall I reply to the PM? Hope you were not offended by my sharing. Let me know and I will keep my mouth shut. Kinda realized I was sharing something from a private message after I was done the post. Totally sorry if that was not public info.
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{shrug} it's fine... But either way, no one is going to tell anyone about how much they make on the Internet (including me). :)
 
digitalpoint said:
either way, no one is going to tell anyone about how much they make on the Internet
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... more the point - just because one site make good money, doesn't mean that any other site can necessarily achieve the same result. It depends on a lot of unique circumstances which are not necessarily reproduceable - even by someone who has already done well with one site.
 
Sim said:
... more the point - just because one site make good money, doesn't mean that any other site can necessarily achieve the same result. It depends on a lot of unique circumstances which are not necessarily reproduceable - even by someone who has already done well with one site.
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It's a tiny test tube, but I'm having fun with my new hobby site...just to see what it take to start from scratch these days with few resources ($20 VPS) and see what happens....

I had over 1,000 page views yesterday and I felt happy in the way I did back in 1996!

An interesting tidbit on the new site is that my Amazon product links, only a few, are making MANY times the income as my adsense. When I tried Amazon links on my old site, I didn't make anything!

I didn't load the new site up with a lot of ads. I promised myself that I would wait until 2014 to think about payback....if ever. But curiosity has killed the cat more than once.....

You are 100% correct. Each site must be considered differently.
On the other hand, I have no doubt that if I applied myself in the new site like I did in my big site...that I could make some decent $$ - not a living, but some decent extra money at minimum.

Business is a skill...sure, some people make money without business and marketing skills, but it's much harder or just luck of the draw. You have to study - then study more - your audience, your subject, your topics, what content people want, etc.

I'd say a successful web property is the opposite of what Steve Jobs said about Apple. He said people don't know what they want and need to be shown or told. With web stuff, you have to figure out based on traffic, readership and common sense what THEY want and then give it to them...

I heard a fable when I was very young and it stuck with me. It was about a boy who wanted strong muscles more than anything in the world. An older man told him he could tell him how to get them...but then kept delaying when the boy asked for details, telling the boy to saw wood, or carry water from the well and he would teach him later.

You can guess the rest. The boy developed good muscles!
 
I'm no expert but I find starting/operating a forum to be much like starting any business.

You have to offer something others want. You have to manage it well. You have to put a tremendous amount of time and effort into it. You have to find ways to promote it to your target. You need to be willing to do all this without making a dime until your forum grows to the point it begins to attract advertisers or generates enough traffic to make ad networks an option.

And, like a business, if you don't love what you do, I doubt it'll have much of a shot at being successful.
 
craigiri said:
I had over 1,000 page views yesterday and I felt happy in the way I did back in 1996!
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Felt the same back in November. (y) I also received a nice boost of earnings after that explosion. It's a little easier to get that much with a niche blog, but a forum, especially when you're staring out? Yeah, a little harder. It took me a long time to get to that point.
When I tried Amazon links on my old site, I didn't make anything!
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Problem is that it may not be relevant to the niche that you're using Amazon on. It's easy to monetize Amazon with a niche forum or blog because with new game releases [for example], people want to pre-order more, or buy a copy.
I didn't load the new site up with a lot of ads.
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Me neither. I don't want to drive my users away with "holy lots of ads!" And I still see more sites using a lot of ads. In fact, I just saw a Black Ops 2 Forum just recently transferred to xenForo, guess what? The owner put so many friggin ads on the forum that it's not even funny. Chances are the forum will die off. Mostly because users don't like "a lot of ads," and because search engines like google degrade rankings of sites that has more than few ads.

I can't help but facepalm.

Side note: Importing the same database to the same website over and over again. *shakes head* Duplicate content a big no-no.
Business is a skill...sure, some people make money without business and marketing skills, but it's much harder or just luck of the draw. You have to study - then study more - your audience, your subject, your topics, what content people want, etc.
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You are right on a lot of that. However, if it's much harder, then you have to try harder. You have to try everything.
 
Unless you already have an existing active site / customer base or whatever it's probably not going to come by itself. There are many things involved that are required and even then it's still not guaranteed to happen. There is a reason companies like IB buy up all these forums instead of starting new ones: it's much harder to create & grow than to buy and put ads on it.

You will have to do your research and understand the requirements for growth and apply them. Then be patient and not give up.
 
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