Choosing a Niche for Your Forum

When starting a new forum, the first thing you need to decide is what the niche of your forum will be. This can be a strainful decision for many webmasters. A niche is the primary topic or focus of your website or forum.

There are two main things to avoid when choosing the niche of your forum. Firstly, you must avoid choosing a topic that’s too saturated. If your niche already has large, successful forums about the exact topic, it can be very difficult to break away to success. The second thing you must avoid is making a forum niche that’s too specific. If your topic is something so specific that there is only a small audience, you won’t get much activity. This is not because of competition, but rather because of lack of interest.

The key to choosing a successful niche is to carefully analyze the topics you are considering. You need to find a topic that has enough interest but not enough competition.

There are many things you must consider when choosing your forum niche.

Make a list of what you enjoy. Then go to each of these topics and narrow them down even more. For example, say you wrote down gaming. You can then narrow that down to PC gaming, video game counsels, online gaming, etc. That can be narrowed down further: Gaming > Video Game Counsels > Xbox > Halo. While you don’t have to make it as specific as a specific video game, oftentimes the more specific the niche the better. After you’ve generated a list of potential forum niche’s, consider the following things before jumping to create a new forum.

• The best forum niche is something you enjoy. Even better is a topic you’re passionate about. This is the most important thing when considering the niche of your forum. If you don’t like or have little interest in the topic of the forum, you won’t be as motivated in running the site. It is difficult to successfully administer a site you have no interest in; it’s doable, but it’s no walk in the park.

• Consider the profitability of the niche. Can you make money from it? Are there products to be sold? If you’re interested in running a forum for a hobby and aren’t interested in the money then you need not consider this variable.

• Is there competition for this niche? Keep in mind that the more competitive the niche, the harder it is to be successful. The ideal niche would be something you’re interested in, many other people are interested in, and that doesn’t have much, if any, competition. One very general method of determining the competition is to Google “*keyword* forum” in Google. The lower the results the better (note: this isn’t necessarily a reliable method of determining competition). You can also use Google’s Adword’s Keyword Tool to get a rough idea of search volume and competition for any keyword or niche. You may need to make the niche more specific, more general, or find a new niche altogether.

• Even if there is a large amount of competition for the niche, check out the competing websites. Are they doing a good job? If they are, then you should consider something else. However, if the members seem unsatisfied or if there is an obvious need for something the competition doesn’t offer, you should enter the niche. One of the most valuable pieces of advice that can be given is to find a need and fulfill it. Find what the members want and give it to them. If the competition is unwilling or unable to supply what’s needed, you have a very realistic shot at success. Improve upon what’s needed and what your competition is missing. Do this, and you will have success.

• Is there adequate interest in this niche? If people don’t want to talk about the niche you may have an unusual topic or a niche that’s to specific. Following the example above, if you made a niche exclusively about an older, outdated game such as Halo 1 you might not have much interest. The same goes for other specific niches such as Halo maps, game glitches, etc. You want specific, but not too specific.

• There are many other variables you must consider for your niche. For example, if you’re interested in building a long term forum, you don’t want a topic that will be obscure in a year. Consider hidden things that might not have been thought of above, or factors that may affect your forum’s success indirectly.

All in all, the niche of your forum is the most important of all issues you will face. It should be something that you’re interested in, that has an open market for success. Improve upon your competition and you will succeed.

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Extremely true. Nothing as far as I know can kill a forum as much as trying to run it purely for monetary gain without any actual interest in the subject. Yes, I've seen it, as have many people here on AdminAddict, yourself probably included. They set up a forum based on what's the 'in topic', then two months later it's closed and they never figured out why it didn't take off instantly. Then they try and set up another forum... etc.

Ditto. This is Webmaster forums and general chat forums are often a bad idea. Heck, these kinds of forums usually require more work than it's worth to exist personally, from my experience:

Tech:

Webmaster/Web Design
Web Hosting
Programming

Gaming

The Legend of Zelda
Halo
Final Fantasy
Pokemon
[General Console Publisher]

TV

Star Trek
Doctor Who
etc

You probably know many, many other examples, but from my experience, those are some of the most saturated niches in the subject areas.

Excellent point, although not particularly bullet proof; I know a lot of forums which have improved on the market leaders and still not won due to their site not having quite the momentum of the older site and community attachments.

To be fair, some outdated niches do well. I know some for example based on games in the SNES era that are still extremely active, and I know of forums based on consoles that didn't even suceed when sold in shops that did relatively well, and communities based on cancelled TV programs that seem to be doing okay.

But it's a decent point, going too specific can cause a forum to get dated extremely quickly.

Great article. But have you any ideas about these 'other variables'?