Will my idea fail or succeed? Tips please!

Hello,

My plan is to create a forum about anything and everything. I will buy a vBulletin license as well as use vBSEO, and get a nice dedicated server to handle the mass amount of traffic I'm hoping my forum will receive. The name of the forum is just a name and doesn't have the words "anything", "forum", or "board" in the title or in the domain. It's kinda like Sythe.org, a site about the game Runescape; having a name that has nothing to do with Runescape, but is successful in becoming a widely popular bulletin board.

The forum will have categories like electronics, games, entertainment, and sports. It's really going to be a forum that most internet users would enjoy. I'm thinking about doing stuff like contests, or maybe making it so once a user reaches a certain amount of posts, they receive a prize. I have lots of ideas coming out of my brain.

So the question is, will this idea fail?
Do you have any tips for me?
Maybe you think I should start a forum about something specific, let me know what idea you have in mind!

I'm open to all suggestions, tips, and critique.

Thanks!

 

The only reason it will fail is if you give up on it. If you keep at it and make sure that you constantly work on it then eventually you will get there. Good luck

 

Talking about getting a loyal visitors/members, starting a forum without specialized keywords will be hard IMO, unless your forum is geographically or local-language targeted. Do you have any idea about how to publicize it?

 

Thanks!

Well I was thinking I could advertise on other forums and maybe even youtube. I could get a small forum going and then I could start some sort of referral award program. There's a lot of possible ways. I don't plan giving up too easily. Even if it seems like it's going to fail, I'll stick through it until I can get it bigger and bigger.

 

Make sure your forum design is attractive to the visitors. Design holds a important role determining the success of forum. From the experience I can say that.

After creating your forum, ensure you have lots of interesting topics for the visitors to hook-up with your forum.

 

The best test of whether a business idea is viable is simply to find out if anyone else is doing it. Are there any forums out there about ‘anything and everything’ that are actually successful? If so, then you may be onto something.

My feeling is that your time and energy would be better employed in creating a forum that caters to people with a real enthusiasm for something (pets, fishing, cars, etc).

In general, trying to cater to everyone isn’t a great strategy in business. Much better to create a product with a FOCUS - something that attracts enthusiastic people in a particular niche. Such a product will be easier to market and have more revenue potential.

 

that is very hard job ! I hope you will be succesufull ! But i like specialised forums. Not general topics.

 

As a few members already mentioned, to establish an active and popular forum is not easy.

I suggest you to norrow your niche and chose one of your mentioned categories and focus on it.

Also I would suggest you to do a research before you put your hard work. You don't want to put
all your effort to yet another 'electronics' forum. There are hundreds if not thousands forums about
the electronics.

Find the niche that don't have a forum and create one, I bet your success rate will be much higher
than doing what everyone else is doing.


Hope this helps.

 

to success online, YOU SHOULD BE MORE SPECIFIC

no-one can succeed if he begin with a large site, start small and more specific, and you will gain much more than the big ones

why? i will tell you

when you create a specific web site or forum you will:

1- you will be a search engine friendly, and your site will rank higher than others in your specific nich
2- you can manage it successfully, especially if you have an experience in your niche
3- you can sell affiliate products easily, because your visitors are more targeted
4- if you plan to put adsense to your site, be sure google pays more per clicks on the specific sites
6- you can build a huge list in your specific niche to promote again and again

just start with a specific niche, or as we say micro-niche, don't waste your time again and take action today and everyday, then you will see amazing results.

to your success

Ayman X

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys, that definitely made me think, and I'll probably end up following your suggestions.

 

Sounds very expensive to purchase a vBulletin license and Dedicated Server, I'm not quite sure if you mean you will buy those immediately or in time but I would recommend going with another forum software and a VPS unless you do really have the funds available.

 

Yes, I do have the funds available. People like vBulletin netter, which is why I am going to go with them rather than any other forum software. And I wanna get a dedicated server, so I can make sure it is to not go down like other forums I have seen who couldn't handle the size of their forums.

 

I think the idea of giving out prizes will be a sure winner

 

If you're thinking of failure before the start of something, then success will only be a dream. so, immediately do something on your mind.

 

You definitely want to make the forum niched for now. Example, just put attention towards whatever your first members chat more about, and keep running with it. Then, once you have a member base that's large enough, start expanding into other categories. Honestly, the top forums are niched to a point.... The uber-general or all-encompassing idea is admirable, but I would narrow to just one topic for now if you want to see initial success. I had two forums and one failed by being too broad but the other was niched for artists, and did rather well.

 

yeah I suggest a niched forum, but one you can expand on like for instance modern warfare, you expand on all titles and releases, and future released.

 

Lot of people come into this business for earning money, but soon they get tired coz of amount which they have to invest in this business, they usually don't. That's why their expectation doesn't meet their requirement. That's why lot of people doesn't success in this business. If you got all my point and still want to run this business I'm sure you'll surely succeed.
Wish you best luck.

 

I don't think so...Because it's works very well in Traffic.................

 

In your starting days i will suggest you to advertise your forum on search engines.

 

You need a niche.. a reason to come to your forum rather than other, already established ones!