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History digitalpoint- How to create a big forum?

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by robby0123, Dec 13, 2010.

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  1. #1
    Hello,

    I'm also a forum owner and digitalpoint is a very big forum with many users all the time.
    Can anyone tell me how digitalpoint became so big?
    What should one do to get a big forum like this in another niche?
    I know content is king but so far i'm miles away from here.

    Thanks,
    Robby
     
    robby0123, Dec 13, 2010 IP
  2. Digital_shubhi

    Digital_shubhi Illustrious Member

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    #2
    May be develop some cool softwares for people to use or some other info which people might find interesting in your forum.
     
    Digital_shubhi, Dec 13, 2010 IP
  3. br3adman

    br3adman Active Member

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    #3
    Digital Point prolly had a huge budget to make the forum so big at the very beginning
     
    br3adman, Dec 13, 2010 IP
  4. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #4
    Digitalpoint was started after seochat was sold and became overloaded with advertising - seriously affecting access. Back '04 I was still on dialup and seochat was virtually unusable. Shawn obviously felt the same and added this forum onto his existing business domains. Because he already had the respect of many seochat members there was an instant uptake. There weren't many good forums back then and there was a small group of active internet marketers who tended to sign up to any new ones and then see which got traction. Clearly dp did.

    As for replicating that success - 6 years down the track the whole forum market has matured and it will be alot harder to start one. You either have to have a disaffected user group (as we were) or a user group that has no forum. Good luck finding the latter. You are competing with facebook groups and pages and countless other forums. Think things through very carefully and work out how many users you will need to keep the forum vibrant, and also the hosting costs of a busy server. I have a client with a relatively small forum (hundreds of posts a day as opposed to hundreds an hour) and they have needed to get their own server to cope with the database size, bandwidth etc. Be prepared for those costs!

    I don't think so.

    That definitely helped.
     
    sarahk, Dec 13, 2010 IP
  5. robby0123

    robby0123 Member

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    #5
    My forum is about relationships so i will not be the only one and its in dutch.

    Grtz,
    Robby
     
    robby0123, Dec 13, 2010 IP
  6. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #6
    The dutch thing gives you both limitations and opportunities. You have a smaller group to target (not one of the major languages) but if there are no other dutch forums in your market then you are all set. People will feel more confident discussing personal issues in their primary language.
     
    sarahk, Dec 13, 2010 IP
  7. satguy

    satguy Well-Known Member

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    #7
    Building big forums now days is very hard, and will take a long time to get members signed up and posting...
     
    satguy, Dec 13, 2010 IP
  8. rlerza

    rlerza Peon

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    #8
    if you can be unique in any way that will do the job, try to think outside the box, look at your market and see if there are any gaps, and then fill it in and develop a community around it.
     
    rlerza, Dec 13, 2010 IP
  9. ExaMike

    ExaMike Peon

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    #9
    Building a big forum might required a long time.. It required a lot member to signup and of course it take a long time to build
     
    ExaMike, Dec 13, 2010 IP
  10. Lightman3243

    Lightman3243 Greenhorn

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    #10
    Thanx For this information..
     
    Lightman3243, Dec 14, 2010 IP
  11. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #11
    We also had a little under 100,000 users using our tools already so it was a support forum for the userbase we already had.
     
    digitalpoint, Dec 14, 2010 IP
  12. robby0123

    robby0123 Member

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    #12
    Thanks Shawn,

    Wow 100.000 visitors allready, that's miles away from me, i'm starting from crap, the forum is now 1 year and i just have 350 members. There must be something to get more visitors. I have a blog, they can post there images, linkpage etc.
    Any great idea's are more then welcome:)
     
    robby0123, Dec 14, 2010 IP
  13. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #13
    Just create something that people can't get anywhere else and they will come to your site for that.
     
    digitalpoint, Dec 14, 2010 IP
  14. robby0123

    robby0123 Member

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    #14
    And what about servers? What are the costs of for example this forum and what are the revenues. If this is private, i understand, i just want to have an idea what i coul expecting of costs...
     
    robby0123, Dec 14, 2010 IP
  15. Project Mobius

    Project Mobius Peon

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    #15
    I don't know why you are worried about servers when you don't even have a forum. Normal hosting is more than enough for you to start with, until you get more users, then you start thinking about VPS or dedicated servers. I doubt you will get that far anyway so no point thinking so far ahead.
     
    Project Mobius, Dec 14, 2010 IP
  16. GeeOne

    GeeOne Well-Known Member

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    #16
    Yes, that can make the difference.

    And I recollect one quote by one great person Mr. Shiv Khera WINNERS DON'T DO DIFFERENT THINGS. THEY DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY.

    G!

     
    GeeOne, Dec 14, 2010 IP
  17. S-Kwire

    S-Kwire Guest

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    #17
    You have to think outside the box... thats all you need to be successful at doing anything including making big forums.
     
    S-Kwire, Dec 14, 2010 IP
  18. robby0123

    robby0123 Member

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    #18
    Thanks for the replies sofar
    We give advice but i don't think that's enough. What about advertising? Is that an option?
    Are there big forum owners here that started from nothing?
     
    robby0123, Dec 14, 2010 IP
  19. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #19
    Advertising will get you people to look at your site, but they aren't going to sign up or come back if you don't have something unique they would be interested in. Just ask yourself why you signed up for sites (like this one).
     
    digitalpoint, Dec 14, 2010 IP
  20. mdvasanth86

    mdvasanth86 Notable Member

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    #20

    I just wanted to say ,Thanks for asking the question.
     
    mdvasanth86, Dec 14, 2010 IP
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