I own the domain studentcommonroom.com and was planning on making it into a UK student forum, however I there is thestudentroom.co.uk with 100000+ members and thousands of daily posts which has now put me off the idea as brand new forums are always hard to get started. Do you think I should try and compete and make the domain into a forum or try something else with it? Anyone any suggestions?
You should try. If it ain't working, you can always sell the domain. Students don't want to be active at just one place. I'm active at 5+ forums and still looking for more. If you buy a webmaster domain and start a webmaster community, ppl will become member and will be active. Ppl want more !
If you are interested in this niche and could do provide USP for your forum, then by all means go for it.
You have to remember that 99% of all forum topics already have forums with tons of members and posts. No matter what forum you make, there will always be another forum in your niche. Offer something the other forum doesn't and don't give up.
The fact that there's already a hugely successful forum in that niche should motivate you to go forward. Someone else has tested the idea and it definitely works. I'd go for it. Hire a few people to populate your forum with posts to get it going and then hopefully it will grow on it's own.
Thanks for that guys, what kind of USP could I have on the forum? I cant seem to think of anything that the other site doesn't have
If you think you can make a difference and get forum members , and have the time and money to compete you should try.
That's true. If you really want to do it - go ahead. However if you're just looking for a new project, you might want to search for something with less competition.
If you think you have a good idea, go for it. I am a part time student, I'd never even heard of the first forum until you mentioned it - so you can reach people who aren't members of that forum. You could join the other one, see what's 'wrong' with it, and improve on it. There's always room for something better / different.
I have joined the other one but I cant seem to be able to find areas that I could improve or something they dont have that I could. I could probably have a better design as theres is the standard vbulletin but I only know how to edit XMB forums whereas vbulletin seems to have much better features like the reputation system :/
You should make a list of all the services you can offer that will be better than that site, and services that they are not offering to students as yet and try adding those on your site.
Hi If something on your forum can save students money, that would probably help. Maybe offering them a cash back on purchases like http://greasypalm.co.uk would encourage them to use your forum & pass the word around. Also find several student forums (not just UK based) and combine the best features of each of them so yours becomes the "best of the best". Good luck, Trevor
Thestudentroom.co.uk used to do the cashback thing on purchases but it never worked so they stopped it.
I could have some sort of script that shows a list of all the members attending uni x doing course y etc but I couldn't code this myself, does anyone know how much it would cost?
I'm not sure what is it you are looking for but I think there's not much competitors out there. All you need is to find a USP and get them to your forum. One way of driving traffic is hire popular students to help you promote your site. If they got a blog, or they are popular in school, hire them to help you.
By offer more value (or more fun), you should definitely be able to compete with that site, providing you have some experience with promoting forums.
Whats the worst that could happen? You fail? Then you learn from your mistakes and move on. You dont know what can be accomplished until you give it a shot.
That is the best advice I have heard in a long time! I can't tell you how many sites I started that have failed but I learned so much everytime that the future looks very bright