Paid memberships

Im asking this for a friend, of some sort. Not too sure why im bothering so much about it. I should be glad lol.
Any way, i run a parenting forum, and so does she.
The difference between the two is she expects all her members to pay to use the forum, i dont.
This is really annoying me because she is looking for new members, but is complaining that no one is signing up, and i tell her that its because no one is prepared to pay for a forum that they cant even get a proper glimpse at what its like and what it offers. She only has few general discussion forums open, that offer nothing.
Other issues is that she has the forum closed for guests. She also has bad punctuation and structure. The colours on her forum are also really bad.

How can i help someone build their community when they wont take some sort of advice, any one got any tips?

 

Personally I would not help a competitor build their community, some people may think thats bad of me but imagine youve been helping them for years and their forum outgrows your own, ranks higher than yours, you seriously could lose out in the end. I would let them stick at it myself, if they havent took your advice then they will have to learn the hard way

 

That is so true, which is why I said Im not sure why I am even bothering LOL. I guess Im just too nice sometimes.

 

It may seem mean but imagine if your forum required a dedicated server funded solely by ads on your site, if you began helping your direct competition grow theirs and they ended up ranking higher in the search engines than yourself, you would end up losing a lot of revenue which is supporting your website which could be the cause of your own help and may even lead to you being unable to afford the site anymore.

 

yea ... you can give her some contructive critisim(sp?) but thats about it...help her out but keep your distance..play it safe.

 

I agree (kind of) with not helping, but still, if it's the same cause, help her out, just a little. Being stingy and not helping out really isn't going to get you anywhere, and could end up hurting things between the two of you.

I agree with you re: why would someone pay when they can't see what they're getting first. This is why you install some sort of limitation mod for guests. Let them see a few topics so they SEE what they're getting. vB has an excellent mod for this.

Permission changing is another great thing. Let guests see topic titles, but not the topics. This way they know what they're getting into, or at least have an idea.

As far as sentence structure, grammar, spelling? It'll be the death of her as an admin. You can't keep a forum running (successfully) without grasping the English language, if you're targetting that demo.

It does sound in a way like you're wasting your time. Talk to 'em, tell 'em you've already given advice, and that they need to take it. If they do, then cool, if not, then hey, there's no need to waste any more of your time.

 

Thanks every one.
I just needed to get away form her I think, coz she is obviously doing things wrong and Im a bit of a perfectionist so was trying to help her so it didnt annoy me so much, but Ive decided its enough and its up to her to get help if she wants it, but she clearly doesnt want the members bad enough to make changes. Not my problem