Can new forums grow as big as the old ones ?

There are hell a lot of forums which has huge experience and growth.
My question is can new forums grow to compete with the old forums which are already growing at a rapid pace ?
will the users switch ?
Even if they do can the new ones come out as the best ?

 

Yes, with the right promotion techniques new forums can catch up with even pass up older forums. But, the owner of the forum has to be willing to spend the time and the money to promote the forum. Is not enough to build some backlinks and build some content, you have to have an aggressive advertising campaign.

Advertising is the key to serious growth.

New forums have to offer something "different" from older forums. What that is will be determined by the content.

On my main forum, a lot of my members are from other forums.

 

I agree, in fact I've seen a few forums that were started in the past year or so that have grown faster and passed forums that I know have been around since the middle to late 90's.

It's really a matter of finding then attracting your target audience. Also you need to have a well rounded staff, good features, a decent look, and useful content to keep the members coming back.

 

I'm certainly catching up in my market, and I'm not even actively trying. The key is to never give up, and heh, unlike what I'm doing, actually put some effort into it. If you are trying to break into the webmaster market, yeah, there are a LOT of forums, but only a small handful are bothering to try. Most start up on a dinky host, and hope that people will just start to swarm... no, it takes work, a LOT of work.

 

Definitely. The new forum doesn't even have to do everything better than the older forums, it just has to do something better.

When Shawn went AWOL and this place went completely to hell, a bunch of us created NetBuilders as an alternate home.

We added a lot of features that differentiated NB from DP and we experienced fairly rapid growth and fantastically happy community members.

Now Shawn's back and he's implemented a lot of the features that used to differentiate NB.

This competition is good for members of both communities, because it forces both forums to get better.

We've implemented three improvements this week: Advanced Media Embedding, Auto Thread Tagger, and vB Drafts. I'm sure Shawn is working on a whole series of improvements for DP.

Will NB ever overtake DP? Hmmm... it could happen -- especially if Shawn decides to take another extended vacation without leaving anyone in charge!

But if not -- who cares? NB is still doing great and adding value to the lives of it's members. You don't have to be #1 in terms of members, threads, posts, or page views. You just have to do a good job for the community members you do have. If you do that, growth will occur organically.

 

lol spencer you want shawn to not develop DP ?
Anyway your forum is nice on content but where did you get such ugly design ?

 

Oh no, exactly the opposite in fact! As I stated, competition is good because it forces us both to improve.

Tastes are not universal.

 

yup only you are competing with him , he isn't
coming back to the rofl skin of yours...
strange , even kids would laugh at the design
well its your liking maybe have a poll in your forum most would suggest to change the skin

 

It depends on no. of threads created and no. of posts per day. If posting rate is more, then newer website can beat older ones.

 

The design of NetBuilders.org looks clean and fresh to me. Just those blue-green headers are rather showy on eye.

 

Yes, but you must add something new or target another demographic. My forum overtook the previous forum (which had over 500,000 posts) after 3 years. The key is having good management and habits.

 

I'd say that post quality is a lot more important than post quantity.

Exactly! You must offer something which the older forum didn't offer.

You must have your own "Unique Selling Points".

That's definitely a rare feature. Most forum admins are a bit crazy.

 

Yes, but it takes time, and a LOT of advertising money which most forum owners don't have. It's always good to have several forums for people to go and browse everyday. I don't think there's anyone that uses exclusively one forum, so the more forums, the better. I guess what I'm trying to say is, not only is it possible for a new forum to grow as big as the old ones, but it is also welcome.

 

yes, why not.

keeping sharp eye on spam and abuse. a forum can grow rapidly.

 

What 's the advantage of creating a forum instead of a blog ?
Does anyone really make money from a forum ?

 

blogs may get fair traffic at the go , but when forums gets settled in a path its smooth sail for you...
like shawn here

 

Forums being Internet entities mirror real-life entities. The go through a creation, renewal and death. Because everything works on Internet time, yes its entirely possible new forums will kill of the old forums that don't keep reinventing themselves.

 

It doesn't necessarily require money. Good community forums can grow by word of mouth.

Advertising can increase your rate of growth, but it is definitely not a necessity for success.

I think this is critical. No one wants to spend time in a dump.

Blogs are mostly a form of one-to-many communication. Forums are a form of many-to-many conversation.

Forums require much more effort to build successfully, but when they are successful they take on lives of their own. If I don't post to my blog for a day, no growth happens. If I don't post to my forum for a day, hundreds of other people do.

Some people do, but most people build forums as altruistic projects to give back to their communities.

Change is the only constant.

 

That's good to hear. I hate spending money on advertising! I like products/forums/sites to speak for themselves