Quiters

I do not know how many times I have seen someone saying they are starting a new forum, they want some help with post and new threads, this is going to be a great forum, blah, blah and more blah,,,,, the usual stuff.

So I'll sign up, post some stuff. Then go back a few weeks, or a month or two later and the forum is gone. Either the domain name can not be resolved, or the account was suspended by the hosting provider for not paying the bill,,,,, all kinds of reasons.

Is it that a lot of people start forums on a whelm, or its a split second decision, or they do not realize how much work its going to take, or they just change their minds, or something else?

Then there are the people that start forums every 2, 3 or 4 months - and closing the forums they just started. Its the same people on the same webmaster forums, saying the same thing month after month - the last forum did not workout so I closed it and opened this new one. 2 - 3 months later its the same thing, but with a new idea and new domain name. Its as if they never give the community a chance to grow.

 

I dont think a lot of people realize the work and time it takes to grow a community. Sometimes you can get lucky and launch a huge hit community, takes no time and not much effort to grow, and I'm sure everyone dreams of this, but the reality is, one out of maybe 1,000 forums can do it. I know I've personally had probably 60 or so forums in the last 12 years, of those one was a huge hit from the moment it launched, and the others took a lot of time to build.

Never have I though started one, just to give up on it, if I dont think I can make it work or run out of time to work on it, I simply sell it and wait for the next idea to hit me and launch another new one. Usually I never sell with less than 3-6 months of work already done on them and they are generally 100% ready for someone to pick up and just start promoting though.

But I do agree, that its generally the same people on many webmaster forums launching idea after idea. And the best part of it is, that they rarely change their niches. They'll fail at one type of forum, and then close it and relaunch another forum of the same type, its total insanity.

 

Some people are really into the get-rich-quick, pump-and-dump side of online marketing; they are good at generating a buzz, getting a lot of clicks, and often manage to annoy their host or violate some TOS somewhere and have to move on to the next big thing. I don't know how they do it.

 

I start forums off but do the content myself. Some forums take off, some don't. But you can guarantee they'll still be there as long as Google is. As I don't go off looking for people and pester them to register and ask them to post content. I'll post the content myself, and I know it's a good 6 - 12 months before you get regulars with an interest as strong as your own related to getting it going.

I'd never register on a forum because somebody has asked me. And I don't want to go on a new forum and start with the content, I'd much rather do my own.

My 'thing' are construction forums, I'd never register on another, and I wouldn't ask anybody to register on my own. I rank them well, and get content on them, and the traffic comes to the forum for the content. Content is king afterall.

I've had unhappy members make a forum of their own, run it for a few months, get some of my members posting on there (and my rule of thumb that I say to all my members "register on them all, I bet you spend the most time on mine") and then it shuts. They all come back.

I have a forum that's a car one, and as it's not my thing (it used to be) it's slow, I need to get more content on it, NOT members. Content. Not Members. (Just to be clear) lol

 

Gearch

 

The word quit isn't in my vocabulary and my main domain name is paid up for 8 years while hosting is three years. My site is about 8 months old and I'm lucky to see 20-30 post a day. But I love a challenge.

In attempt at some shameless advertising, I started a small promotional give away today

 

I know exactly what people here are talking about, and quite honestly, it annoys me to no end. Those people that set up a forum for the wrong reasons (monetary interest, intentions of easy and quick popularity and an easy job, to get back at another forum) often end up doing the kind of thing mentioned in the first post, usually when the starting boom of activity dies down and they realise they actually need to put in work to keep the activity going and to promote the forum.

In all honestly though, to me, those kinds of forums are the least of my concern. Simply because to be honest, they never had much a visitor base in the first place. What is depressing however are forums that have been going between 1-2 years or even longer that close down without any warning or reason. It's rather tragic when a great resource just vanishes without a trace, or just gets left on auto pilot as the staff apparently can't be bothered to run the forum any more. I know of multiple sites that have done that, and it makes even the ones that give up before they even start seem at least somewhat positive in comparison.

 

I have seen this before plenty of times. I think sometimes they may do it through lack of time or because they were in it for the money etc or not realised all of the hard work needed but I do understand and sympathise with them as building a community is very hard work especially when you have limited time to spare

 

I know some guy who starts 5 gamewebsites a year. After that year ends, they all vanish and he starts 5 other gamesites. He now has 2 gamewebsites and 2 others, so it's slightly changing.

The reason why these websites fail? He sets them up and expects it will automatically become succesfull..

 

Yep, there definitely are plenty of quitters out there. It's frustrating to take part in a community only to see it closed down.

I think the novices believe that forums are quick and easy: set it and let the people flock to it, making it an instant success. All of us know that such is absolutely not the case, except in extremely unique or rare situations.
When these people realize after about a month that nothing magical is happening, they close down and try something else. Who knows how many times it will take them to realize that they can't create a 1-month success story.

 

And he is probably quitting when traffic is just about to pick up. From what I have seen, its takes about 1 year for traffic to start to pick up. That is unless you spend some money on advertising.

 

I don't have the heart to stop my forum.
I can understand that if something happened outside the forum, stopping them from running there forum. I understand that, just not lazy people who expect 20k posts overnight.

 

I'd say that 95%+ of new forum administrators set their standards a bit too high - particularly to start. This is ultimately what causes not only the community's demise, but their ultimate "failure". If you expect to receive a large influx of posts within a matter of hours, you may become disappointed, simply because...

... it does not work like that. Building a community takes time and dedication.

 

deffo does't happen over night...

You need to spend time adding content to attract new members and to get google crawling the content..

Like mentioned above..too many high expectations from new forum admins.

 

Don't forget the other few that quit early, those who expect their money to literally make them money overnight. Yes, some sites do make some form of revenue, but forums are really not the type of site that's 'set up, go and watch money roll in'. I've seen too many administrators start with that kind of goal, with the hopes of quickly and easily becoming some huge success in all aspects just by either setting up and overnight, and sometimes throwing sums of cash into it. Then they realise that doesn't work, and set up shop about as quickly as they came.

 

Maybe it's better for the rest of us that those types give up then.

 

YES!!!

Let the people keep giving up i what I say,.....

When I decided to open my toyota forum..its becuz i was tired of being treated like crap on all the big one...(and theres only a few..but there HUGE toyota forums) and i KNEW it was gonna be a tough challenge.. Like one other poster in this thread said.. " im lucky to see 30 new posts a day..after being open for 8 months"... yea me too man...same boat here..

but...will I give up?? Hell no... Read any succesful forum story and they will all say the same thing..."It took alot of time and a lot of hard work" :spin:

 

Good point, Michelle. Regardless of the fact that they generally don't get very far to begin with, it leaves more growth potential for us and considerably less for them.

 

Awesome. This is exactly the kind of determination that more administrators actually need to have, and I wish more people generally thought in the same way as you do (at least the 'lot of time', 'hard work' and 'don't give up' aspects).

Exactly. Best they didn't bother trying to compete without any interest in the topic before they set up a forum rather than potentially putting people off of the online community due to a hardly managed and quickly shut down forum.

 

That's why I'm all for people selling forums they no longer have the patience for: usually an experienced forum owner can see what's wrong and turn the place around.