5 Tips For Picking a Forum Topic
So you’re ready to start up a new forum, but have no idea for what the topic needs to be. Here are 5 tips for selecting a topic.
1 - What are your interests?
You’re going to have to spend a lot of time working on building up your forum so it’s important that you pick a topic that you’re interested in. If you select a topic that you have little or no interest in you will have a hard time staying motivated enough to stick with your forum.
2 - What can you provide that other forums cannot?
Now that you have a topic that you’re interested in, what can you add to it? You will find it much easier to gain members when your forum has something to offer that other similar forums do not. It can be a feature that other forums have or just your expertise on the subject. But with thousands of web forums it helps to have something that makes your forum unique.
3 - Is there enough to write and talk about?
You may have a topic that you’re passionate about and a great idea for a unique feature to draw in visitors. But is there enough to write about to keep your forum active? Popular forums have thousands of posts. Does the topic you’re considering have enough diversity to have that many posts?
4 - Is it popular enough of a topic to draw members?
Along similar lines as #3, is the topic popular enough that you’ll have enough potential members? It’s much easier to build a user base from tens of thousands of people versus trying to build up your member base from 100 potential members.
Now, there are very successful forums on obscure topics. And if it’s a topic that you really want to start a forum on then it is definitely an opportunity to consider. But it is more difficult to start a forum when you have a fairly limited user base.
5 - Can it be monetized?
This one was saved for last because I think it’s the least important of the 5. If your primary motivation for starting a forum is money then you are most likely going to burn out before you make enough to make it worthwhile. That said, if you have to choose between two topics selecting the one with more opportunities for monetization may be something you want to consider.
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