I am already a Postloop member earning points, but I have been wanting to start a forum for years. The problem is, its for such a small minority I am not sure exactly how I will be able to work Postloop into it. It's going to be for MMO gaming, but 1 specific aspect of the games only. That might be difficult for me. Not only will the members need to know how to play one of the games, but be interested in this particular subject within the game. For instance, say I made a gaming forum for tradeskillers. They would need to understand the mechanics of that game and the tradeskills within that game. Will Postloop work? Or am I just narrowing my chances of finding members too much? It will have a wide variety of games to pick from, but its for a specific niche of player. Its a fan site basically for people to discuss ideas.
That's a small niche, but I've seen much smaller niches. There is a great give and take between niche size and competition. The smaller the niche, the less competition you will be dealing with. However, if your niche is too small, you're going to have an extremely difficult time getting off the ground. This shouldn't come as a surprise and is really just common sense that can be applied to any business/project. I personally have never "researched" that exact niche, so I can't give you any info on your particular niche, and I doubt anybody else can either. I can say that the MMO world is huge, or should I say, massive . Why limit yourself to just tradeskills? Why not open to everything about MMO's and have a section on tradeskills? Anybody interested in MMO tradeskills is going to be interested in MMO's themselves. I understand the benefit of focusing your niche (hence my first paragraph here), but I don't see how a MMO tradeskill forum would attract an MMO player more than an MMO forum would. Most are probably going to prefer the MMO forum over the tradeskill forum. I would. I've seen lots of car forums, but I can't say that I've ever seen a Tire Forum, a Steering Wheel Forum, or a Headlight forum (/me waits for somebody to prove me wrong ). If I'm a car guy, I want to join the forum that talks about cars. I don't want to join 10 separate forums that talk about each of the components.
Specifically, a snow tire forum: http://www.snowtire.info/forum/index.php Smaller the niche = smaller the prospective community. It will be hard, but possible if you put forth the dedication. Good luck with whatever you decide!
I knew it was only a matter of time I bet Charmeuse is looking for something with a little more potential, though. Don't know that many forum owners would be pleased with 1,200 posts over an 8 year period.
I'd actually flip that, and say become THE resource for tradeskills, but have forum sections for discussion of other aspects of the topic and general discussion too. You hook people in by becoming known as the place to go on a narrow part of a large market, then make them want to stay for the rest. When you're dealing with a large market like this one, which has countless forums already and many of them are far larger than you'll be able to compete better if you have a finely defined hook which will make people think of your site when the topic comes up.
LOL - wow! I notice they don't have a "Snow Tire Humor" or "Ladies Only" section - I'll have to suggest it ...
What you should do is make clear in your description that if no real interest is shown, dont subscribe your forum. Save the points for those who are genuinely interested, and punish those who dont listen to it. Dont be discouraged due to the low number of postloop subscribers that will join, as you said its a small niche. An exception would be for a person willing to learn about your niche, but then that goes into genuinely interested again. You can always try, as we say in Dutch, not shotten is always missed.
That snow tire site reminds me of one owned by a friend of a friend, LetsTalkSnow.com which is a forum for snow plowing contractors. Have a look, some of these very narrow niches can be pretty successful.
Niche just means you need to market the heck out of it. Creating and putting up a forum is the easy part, driving traffic is the tricky side of it. Aggressive ad campaigns should work as well as PR with active members who are willing to drop links on other sites should work.
Agreed. Remember that postloop is just there to help along your site...not completely fill and keep it going for a long time. If you're going to be marketing as you should be, you know people who would participate in this sort of thing, and there -is- interest in the niche, then go for it. You might find a few people here on PL that can truly help your site grow while you're building up and getting natural members otherwise. Just make it clear in your description exactly what you want, and if you only get a few posters, then awesome....you're likely to get the ones who can help you.
