Developing a Community

Hello,

I am looking to develop my first major site.

Do any of you have any experience in this field and can offer some tips to make it successful?

It is in a niche that I am very knowledgable in, as I ran a successful E-commerce business in it for a few years.

Thanks

 

My biggest piece of advice would be to follow your own subject line and build a community. When you build a community of people who trust you, you can sell them just about anything.

Incidentally I provide coaching for site builders/community builders who want to make a name for themselves online [/shameless self promotion]

 

what ever the community you build it should be user friendly.

 

Thanks for the advice

 

Concentrate on a clean niche with the right content and you'll do well.

 

Some years ago I read an excellent book about building communities. If you plan on creating a community I recommend you to read it.

You can get it free from here. http://my.safaribooksonline.com/0-201-87484-9/1?query=(Community+Building+On+the+Web)#snippet

 

Building a community relies on the community. Make it as easy and as great for the users as possible, even if it means making it slightly tougher for yourself.

 

You need to hire few paid poster to post at your forum to make it look like very active.
And then make some contest such as member recruit member to get more member.

 

I don't have an experience but I have watched one: StackOverFlow.com.

It was built by JeffAtWood (codinghorror.com) and JoelSpolsky(joelonsoftware.com). They made use of their brains to code/develop the platform and of their blog audiences to boom their community. I can say it's the biggest one in the web right now, beating expert-exchange!