8 Reasons NOT to start a forum
There are thousands and thousands of web forums out there. My guess is that if you’re reading this you’re at least thinking of starting one if you haven’t already. We hear about the reasons to start a forum (fun, branding, marketing, etc) but it’s difficult to find information on why you shouldn’t start a forum. So today we’re going to look at 8 reasons not to start a forum; not to try and dissuade you from starting a forum, but to get you to look at your motivations and make sure you’re setting up a forum for the right reasons and with realistic expectations.
1 – To Make Money
Money seems to be a popular reason to start up a website, so let’s get it out of the way first. If you ever make a profit from your forum, and that’s a definite if, then it may not be enough to compensate you for the amount of time you put in. Yes, there are people making good incomes off of forums. But they put a lot of time and effort to get to that point. It’s not simply a matter of putting a few ads on a forum and raking in the money.
Forums have a notoriously low click through rate on ads. Your members will typically view dozens of pages each time they visit, but rarely click the ads. By the time they’ve been on your forum for a while they may not even pay attention to the ads anymore. I don’t know what the average is across the internet, but I see a click through rate of less than 0.1% on my forum.
There are quite a few forums that have a paid membership, which works if you have a very large member base and you can offer something unique for the money. WebMasterWorld does this well. They have a private forum where web designers can discuss the business end of it outside of public view. But they also have thousands of members and hundreds of thousands of pages. A paid board doesn’t work as well when you’re starting out a forum with 5 members and a couple hundred posts.
That said, it is possible to make money off your forum. Just don’t expect it to be immediate. It will take a lot of work, and if money is your primary reason for setting up a forum you will probably get tired of the workload before your forum gets big enough to pull in any significant income.
2 – Too many forums in the same topic
There are hundreds of web design forums. It would be very difficult to start a new one from scratch and get it up to the size of WebMasterWorld or SitePoint. Not saying it can’t be done, but it’s an uphill battle. As an example, it would be much easier to start a forum on knitting because there aren’t as many out there.
3 – Nothing different from current forums
This goes along with the last thought in that if you do go into a subject that’s crowded you’ll need something to make your forum stand out.
Think about the other forums in the niche you’re considering going into. What features do they not have that you want? What can you put onto a forum that your members will find useful but can’t find other places?
I’m going to use a forum of mine as an example of this. If you look at photography forums you’ll see a lot of boards that allow users to post images for critique. What usually winds up happening is that a great image is posted and all the replies are “hey, that’s great” with no real meat. I talked to a few professional photographers and asked that they come on as a Pro Critique Panel and setup a board that will only allow them to reply to threads. What’s happened is that images posted to that board are given very in depth reviews by photographers that know their stuff. Several members have joined and made their first post in that board so they could have their images critiqued by the panel.
4 – You don’t know the subject
Even if you bring everybody you know to your forum to start, you’re still going to wind up starting a lot of threads and answering a lot of questions. It’s going to be much more difficult if you’re setting up a forum on a subject you know nothing about.
As an example, and going back to the money argument, there are lists of high paying keywords that a lot of people start forums and blogs about hoping to cash in on ad revenue. I could probably get a forum on one of these topics up and running in about 10 minutes, but I would never be able to put enough content into the forum because it’s something I know nothing about.
5 – You’re not passionate about the subject
This takes the knowing the subject point a step farther into something you both know about, and are very interested in. Yes, I know a little bit about cell phones. But my interest lies in being able to place a call and not much else. But there are people out there that are always up on the latest cell phone features and models. They would be much better qualified to start a forum on cell phones. Sure, I could probably do a pretty good job at it for a while, but my interest would wane and the forum would suffer.
6 – You don’t have time to spend on it
I’ve read that if you can get a forum up and running on its own within a year you did a good job. That’s a year of writing posts, answering questions, submitting to directories, dealing with problem members, and any of the other hundreds of tasks that fall to a forum administrator.
To use myself as an example again, I have a few ideas for forums that I would like to start. I think they would all do well. But I know that right now I don’t have the time to put into each forum to make it a success. So rather than spending a few minutes each week on half a dozen different forums I’m focusing on just one right now trying to build it up. Hopefully within the next few months it will be fairly self sustaining and I’ll be able to move on to a new project. But for the time I don’t want to do a poor job on a bunch of forums instead of working hard on one.
7 – You don’t have the technical background
There will probably be more disagreement about this one than any of the other 7. But I think it’s important to have at least a somewhat technical background to be able to run a forum successfully.
Two parts to this. The first one is that there is a lot to know about the running of servers. Yes, you can pay your host for this. But it really helps to at least have a passing knowledge about what they are doing. You need to know the reason why your “unlimited bandwidth” host is now telling you that you need to move from the $3.99 shared plan to the $199.99 dedicated server.
And the second is that it helps to be able to customize your forum. You’re probably getting tired of me using myself as an example, and this will be the last time today. This morning I added a button to my forum from AddThis.com that will allow my visitors to bookmark threads in one of several different bookmarking and social networking sites. It only took me about 10 minutes because I knew which theme file to look in and how to code PHP to output the button. Had I not known PHP or where to look and was following instructions from somewhere else it would have taken much longer.
8 – Not a “people person”
I saved this one for last because I think it is very important, but often overlooked. You have to have a knack of dealing with people. You will potentially be interacting with hundreds of people each day in your community. And you want to make sure that they feel a part of that community. You want to make sure that they feel welcomed and that what they have to say is important.
Add to that that you will also be dealing with difficult people. Every forum has flamers, spam, and other issues that come up. You have to have the diplomacy to handle these problems as they arise without your member base falling apart.
So, at the end of the day…
At the end of this, running a forum can be rewarding and a lot of fun. You just have to make sure you’re going in to it for the right reasons. I’m really not trying to discourage anyone from starting a forum, but hopefully making a few of you think about your motivation to make sure it’s something you really want.
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