Recently, my partner and I decided to start selling advertising on our forum (offtopicbb.com) and a member stated that nobody would buy advertising on a dead community. Are we dead? We averaging 2 - 5 new members a day, 100 - 200 new posts a day, 10 - 20 new threads a day. What's the status of dead? We also usually have 5 - 20 users browsing the forums everyday (guests and members). Does anyone mind explaining the meaning of dead for a community? Thanks, Carlos Andrade
"Dead" means whatever pissy forum dwellers want it to mean. As a rationale to not place ads, it doesn't really fly, since forum members tend to not convert anyway -- sounds more like they just don't want to see their home violated. Just be straight with the facts when you talk to your clients -- particularly with numbers like unique visitors and search engine traffic. There's no reason to not try and sell something if that's what you want to do.
dead is a relative term online. I use it all day long. Man, it is dead today. When I mean by it is that no one is calling and everyone is placing their order online instead. Man, it is really dead today. Means no one is calling AND no one is placing orders online LOL. Those days suck. For a dead forum, I'd say if the most popular category gets 3-4 new threads a day; that's pretty dead. Maybe if less than 20-30 post regularly, that's dead too.
A forum is what I like to call community marketing. Now if I listen to your details... the following will be important to me. How big is your forum? In other words your active users total. Now you say that you have about 100 - 200 new posts a day. That is big! But you only have 5 - 20 users browsing each day? That seems odd with the amount of posts each day as it is tiny in comparison. If you gave me that information I would not be convinced to advertise on your forum. However if there are 5 - 20 users browsing at any given moment,... that will seem really great and worth while.
Like 75% of our user base is active - some are on vacation right now, so we're doing well. We're about to pass one of our competitors in content (has he 6,000+ posts and has been opened for about 8 months now). What I think is, the better content, the better site - and which in this case, my site is growing at a rapid pace - and will continue to grow. And posting, yes.
Yeah, it doesn't sound dead to me, might not be the most active forum, but it sounds like it's growing (quite well too).
Yah You know your forum is dead when the only posts you get on it in a week is link spammers. Your forum sure is far from dead. However, you need to grow your members total to get the serious advertising money.
Yes, I'm trying my best to grow the userbase - it's tough, but I think I can do it. Any tips on how to get more?