Buying out competitors and merging them with your forum

Discussion in 'Managing Your Online Community' started by cpvr, Jun 29, 2012.

  1. cpvr

    cpvr Regular Member

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    I've tried this in the past and it really worked out for us. I think if you discuss it with the other members from your competitor's forum, it would be a good idea. Some users may be against it, but if your community is more active, they'll get used to after a while.

    So, have you ever bought out your competitors and merged them onto your community? Did you keep their staff team, or did you remove them? @Dan Hutter @Carlos @Brandon
     
  2. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    I almost bought another DJ board last year but the deal fell through. My idea was to start a new board with it aimed towards club DJs. My community is mostly mobile DJs.

    If I had the capital to work with I'd definitely swallow up a couple of my competitors.
     
  3. businessgal

    businessgal Regular Member

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    I have never purchased another forum. This is not to say that I wouldn't. It would depend on the quality of the forum and whether or not I thought it would benefit my own forum and just as importantly, the members in my forum.
     
  4. cpvr

    cpvr Regular Member

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    Why did the deal for through? Did the owner want more money?
     
  5. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    Basically yeah. My point of contention was a good portion of the content was posts via RSS. The owner thought that RSS content shouldn't be devalued and we couldn't come to terms. I may of slipped a GFY or 3 in the last emails though. :D

    Long story short last I heard he closed up shop.
     
  6. Jessi

    Jessi Regular Member

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    I haven't done it myself, but I've been part of this sort of merge before. Sometimes it's great and works out for everyone, with few people lost. Other times, it really sucks because either the niches don't match or the communities don't mesh, and it just ends up destroying at least one of the communities, if not both.
     
  7. cpvr

    cpvr Regular Member

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    Damn, he should have sold it instead of closing shop. I hate when forum owners do that, just leave users in the dust.
     
  8. bauss

    bauss Regular Member

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    I wouldn't buy out any competitors, and merge them with my forum because I don't want to mess up the member counts. There will be likely members that have accounts on both forums, and maybe with different usernames too. So it could get confusing if you tried to merge accounts as well.
     
  9. dojo

    dojo Regular Member

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    I have bought a competitor domain name, but kinda regret it. it was a useless buy. I do get the idea to buy out some similar niche sites, but it would be mainly a waste of money, since all I'd do would be to redirect them to my site (probably wouldn't bother pay for the content or even migrate it). Since our stats are looking better each month and the community is very active and self-sustaining, I'd better use the money for something better than this.
     
  10. DarkGizmo

    DarkGizmo Mr. Awesome

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    i would buy a competitor if it were beneficial to my community. I know a few people who bought somewhat dead competitor forums in the past just to boost their member and post count but all it did was clutter their forum with duplicate content and inactive members.
     
  11. MustangV10

    MustangV10 Regular Member

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    I've never actually done this. I've sold my forum in the past, however it wasn't to a competitor, it was just to a completely different forum category.
     
  12. Creaky

    Creaky Regular Member

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    I looked in to this recently, site I wanted wasn't interested in selling though.
     
  13. cpvr

    cpvr Regular Member

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    If their content is good and their members are active, its a good buy. But, if the forum is dead with a lot of good topics, its still a good idea to merge because if your forum is active, users will more than likely post on those new threads that came in from the merge. Then you could also send out a mass email to all the old members from the merged community.
     
  14. Brandon

    Brandon Regular Member

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    I would buy out every competitor if I could afford it and the price was right. :)
    I'm just a fan of lots and lots of content. I've purchased a number of sites and merged them with different forums. You must clean the database before merging, removing the junk post and useless spam.
    I've made 2 bad purchases as far as sites go, they looked a lot better before I got in and started cleaning them up.

    Live and learn ;)
     
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  15. Carlos

    Carlos Regular Member

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    I've never done this before, but if I had working capital, I would buy out competition and then merge them into my pre-existing communities.

    I've already gotten my business plan written out to do exactly this.
     
  16. cpvr

    cpvr Regular Member

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    You're just like me. I stand by the quote "Content is king and always will be".
     

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