I'm wondering, Does anyone even bother competing when these monopoly sites which absolutely rule the search engines for basically ALL long tail keywords in specific industries...for eg coupons. You type anything + coupon and PR5 retailmenot rules #1 for everything and takes in all the traffic from SE. These guys have 465K inbound links, 211K pages. They have employees and thousands of dollars a day available for marketing, advertising, etc. Is there any point in even slightly competing with these guys? What's your outake?
I run a travel forum and Tripadvisor and other travel forums are my big competitors. They are everywhere in the serps. But.. how possible that no matter they rule the SE's, I still have visitors and how possible that members register and start to post...? I don't know, but it happens. So.. just create your thing, observe their way of working and do it better yourself within your possibilities and budget.
When I opened my forum, there were dozens of other sites almost exactly like mine. Some of them had been online for years and had tens of thousands of post before I even thought about my site. And now, my main forum gets more post every day then two of the other major players combined. My opinion - Yes, people are able to compete with some of the big players. But only if they do the right marketing or advertising. You have to put yourself in front of the people, and get them to visit your site. And to be honest, not everyone is creative enough to come up with original ideas on how to do that. If you really want to compete, then you have to advertise, such as heavy youtube marketing, buy TV commercial time, buy some banner space on Yahoo or MSN. You can not go around submitting to directories and expect people to find your site.
I agree Kev. So many people on DP get caught up with the few ways to market a website. If they would start thinking of it as a business and doing some off-line marketing as well they would receive some great exposure and it also helps become an authority in your niche.
Could be something to it, maybe not everyone likes the big site and would rather visit your site instead. Would have to figure out what the big site is missing or doing badly.
Could you provide more details of how you marketed your forum initially? I have been wanting to start a forum but am a little apprehensive towards spending a lot in marketing. Please guide.
My primary marketing technique is youtube videos. Over the past 22 months I have uploaded over 300 of my own videos. These are videos that I made, and that I own the copyright to. Link to my youtube account - http://www.youtube.com/user/survivalistboards The videos are pointed towards disaster preparedness, hiking, camping, hunting and gardening. The only thing I use to film the videos with is my Sony or Canon digital cameras. The editing is done with windows movie maker. Total cost to me - $0. Windows movie maker is included with Windows XP and Vista, and I already owned a digital camera. So there was no cost for either of those two items. Besides youtube, I upload the videos to metacafe, dailymotion, myspace, yahoo video, veoh, break,,,,,,, only to name a few. I use a site called tubemogel to push my videos to almost a dozen sites at one time. So I can upload the video once, and with a couple of clicks its pushed out to my accounts on other video sites.
Absolutely and 9 times out of 10 competition is a good thing. It spawns creativity. Without any competition folks tend to "rest on their laurels". Kev makes a good point as well. hope that helps, Nigel
People can compete but the success rate I would think can suffer greatly. Take Burger King and McDonalds and put them directly next to eachother. Their success depends on their differences, not their similarities. If both were exactly the same in the foods taste, the customer service, price, etc. It is likely that the first one that was there would stick around and the other would go out of business. Instead, people find that they are different, even though they both sell burgers. Their food is different, one perhaps carries pepsi products instead of coca-cola products, etc. This is important to remember when trying to compete. What are you bringing that is new to the table? This is why my first business as a web hosting company failed. I still have it and I might make a little bit of money on it. But I have pretty much scratched marketing it with its current state of not offering much of anything new, it wasn't really the best investment. I wasn't bringing anything new to the table that other web hosts were already providing. I'm not trying to discourage you, but rather, I want to encourage you to really be innovative in what you are getting into. Specialize in something unique! Bring that to potential visitors attention and don't think you can be successful in a competitive market without it.
I understand what all of you are saying...but I think he is talking about more about the feasibility and less about the advantages and disadvantages of competition. I'll tell you something...the odds are more likely that this website you are talking about started off as a one man (or woman) job. And as time went by he it got bigger and bigger, and he didnt take the money and spent on shoes, they money got reinvested and few years later (or more) he is running a decent size company. Your off on the right track though; long-tail terms are the best way to start getting free traffic. A long tail term is NOTTTT a 2 word phrase. If it still has a lot of competition that means its not long enough. While the term "Cheap Hosting" has the first result at 93K+ backlinks, the LONG-Tail term that has 6 or 7 words only has 12 backlinks.