How did Digital Point become so big?

As a founder of another forum, Id be interested to know how a site which started in March 2004 can get 54,720 in under 3 years!!

My forum - http://wwco.proboards26.com was founded in June 2004 and has only 900 members??

Whats the secret?

 

Great Marketing? I am not sure lol but it seems the owner is very knows alot about seo and marketing in general. Have tried submitting links and exchanging etc?

Also his market is very niche and im not sure but maybe in 2004 it was alot easier to target the webmaster community. I would say he got in at the right time.

As for your niche as far as i know the market is flooded not saying you cant suceed I am just saying there are thousands or more forums about your topic

Just leaving a note =)

 

Are you wondering why your forum doesn't have as many members?

There are probably a lot of reasons; the subject matter of the forum, what forum software you are running, marketing, seo, the domain, backlinks, competition, content, the quality of membership, ect.

You are running your forum on proboards without a proper domain name for a start... and the nature of the forum is bound to not cater for as many people as Digital Point forums. Digital Point concerns largely for tech/net savvy people and as such will have a much higher popularity than many other types of content.

 

Because you are not on the same skill level as the DP owner.

 

a highly respected owner would play a large role. Being a leader in this field, shawn has many followers and hence it is easier for him to start up this forum. For some reason, the forum is about making money online and i'm sure there're many people interested in this topic.

 

That's a little mean! I think that if you have done that with your forums - even with the disadvantages mentioned before then you are doing well. I think though, that you should take Ippe's hints though - if you change a couple of those things you could be doing way better

Cindy

 

DigitalPoint is God of the forum world, Like How Google is god of the search engines

Plus Shawn is an awesome dude

This is the best webmaster forum in the world

Just look how all the members like it

Total Donations At:
$57,590.20 USD

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/donate.html

 

I don't think those ppl who join DP knew Shawn before. Only when they join and beccomes a part of the community and starts interacting than they know about shawn. Let me tell you why DP is so special and different.

1. Freedom - You will never get so much freedom on ANY webmaster forum.Dp is also one of the most unbiased forums, No advertisement and referals.
2. Buy,sell and Trade section is the most popular section of the DP IMO which makes DP more than a information sharing site.There are ppl who do mid $xxxx per month in DP alone.
3. There are some BIG sharks who post quality content in DP but that's not all, I have seen lot's of small webmasters posting some amazing content. Just start reading and you can see this. Let me warn you, it can take some time...lot's of time.

Just to support my 3rd point, here is a link - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=207259

 

I like this site. I have only been a member for 2 weeks and already over 100 posts. I used to be on webmasterworld but i dont like how they run things there. They are so strict about everything you post.

 

all you guys are simply wrong here......i think only DP owner can tell his secrets but i don't think any successful man will disclose his secrets.

 

Why not stormy ? why wont a successful man reveal his secrets i mean whats there to hide ? the forum is led by members primarily

 

Its not the fact that a man wont reveal his secrets but why should he have to? I see many people asking the same questions to the same person on how this person makes money shit I have done it myself a couple of times.

But when it all comes down to it you should come up with your own damm secrets and keep them secret haha

 

I don't think there are any major secrets to developing a forum. You will find most of them just by looking around on these forums.

 

Theres no secret......Did a secret get you to join?........

 

I guess 1 strategy is to create 100 virtual people and make them talk to each other. Then more will join in.
Interesting topic is a must.

More importantly are the forum running it all by yourself? You need a team to do this especially your moderators need to be in different time zone.

just my 2cent.

 

Shawn offered free webmaster tools that were actually useful and highly valuable. He also offered a place for people to discuss them and improve upon them.

I think that the free tools, combined with his current product lineup contributed to the popularity and massive growth.

 

Shawn originally had the site in place and was offering a number of services/tools to many webmasters. The forum came after that, so all the webmasters who were actually visiting his site / using tools etc. became part of this community. Also, SEO / internet marketing and websites are the most 'popular' topics around these days. Hence the large number of subscribers

Your site/forum covers a specific niche only, which might be one of the cause of you not getting so many users.

 

Shawn is a genius! That's the answer.

 

Among other things, it probably had a lot to do with this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law