Newbie Forum Owner Mistakes

Alundra said:

If nothing else it didn't steal them from you and replace your forum ha ha.

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I wouldn't say that, but today Social Media is the most important way to get traffic to your website/forum/blog. Back then, it was Word of Mouth.

I am a newbie. I am learning a lot from this thread!

I would like to tell my story that has me really shocked.

TL;DR I gave my members a blank cheque, they didn't take it, I didn't care, they left.

Long Story

My original idea is to provide my members of a open forum infrastructure and let them decide the policies and which features they want to be implemented. If things go smooth then we'll try to make it profitable for all, rewarding content creation, obtaining discounts by making purchase groups and so... So the idea was a bit hippy but I thought we had good and capable members.

So the first two months I got a stable community of a hundred members with 20-25 regullary active members, writing good threads, having fun, and good and respectful conversation, over the average quality of same niche forums.

So, time to decide which policies and features include for the community. We opened some discussion about them... and we end with something like:
- No ratings. No user ranks, no thread rating, no post liking.
- No user blogs (neither with full potential ads revenue to them), no localized subforums, no wiki nor any other system for curated content, no chat, no shout box.
- No giveaways, no contests (!!), they don't want the forum give "sponsored" products (???)

That was the most shocking, no sponsored content nor giveaways. They wanted an independient community and felt any sponsored content could made the forum content be seen as biased.

Ok, nice... here we go... a small and very transparent community.

At the first 5 or 6 months things go pretty well for a small community, around 50-80 comments/day, nice threads, good content, some people met in peson and hanged out regullary, all seemed good. I received some purchase offers, some sponsoring proposals... all denied by my community. Of course they know it, and they cheer our growing independent community. During that period I noticed all were happy but no one proposed any sort of improvement, change, more deep collaboration. After that six months things slowed down quickly.

I try and ask my members what they miss in the forum and which features they would want. No response. I asked several veteran members, they say they cannot connect, they have no time because they more important RL things to do. I first I though this was true, maybe it was a bad period.

So I decide to see what my formerly most active members were doing online. Unfortunately I respect privacy a lot so I only used public data to search online; I was tempted to use their email address or check out their PMs but as it's not a critical issue I would not break the trust they put in me as admin/moderator.

Well, I found some interesting discoveries.

- Some of the more forceful anti-sponsored content members were prolific members of sponsored same niche communities.
- Five of those who voted against a blog platform opened same niche blogs around a month after showing their lack of interest.
- Most of the anti contest/anti giveaways were actively signing for sponsored gifts, even created content to enter in contests.

I asked some of them why they do the opposite they critizise, some of them rambled on their right to do what they want and so. I ask them what can I do to make them part of a community and they say it's all ok, but obviously it's not.

I'm a very trustful person, I offer always a chance for an agreement so I seriously don't understand.

I think I was the greatest error, I offered them an easy path for a good community but I gave them all distributed responsability and none took it. Now I'm planning how to relaunch the site, attract good content and make a community with a purpose.

So I have now a 35k post forum with 15-20 daily messages, very low registrations. I still have around 300 visitors/day but they mostly enter, look for new threads and leave without a word.

Any opinion on why this happened, and how to bring it back to life is welcomed.

Maxxamillion said:

Mine was using free forum sites to host my site in (forumotion) though I wouldn't call it a mistake. I didn't know much about forums or websites back then so it's more of using what I knew about. I personally do not think its a mistake it does educate you on the forum scene and helps you move forward

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It was a learning experience for me to use a free forum host. Some won't let you have your database (even if you pay) and I think that is pretty lousy. People in those situations have to restart their forum if they want to move on to something else (usually).

A mistake I made was having too many forums. I learned it is better to stay condensed and split up later. If you start off with many empty forums it actually encourages emptiness I feel. With only a relatively small amount of forums it helps it seem more active and encourages activity because people are actually in forums with some activity.

One of the common mistakes I see people engage in that annoys me is the setting up of ads before they even have a real membership. To me, it only makes the impression that the site is just about making money and there likely lacks a real heart or higher purpose behind the site.

My biggest mistake was probably over moderating. I mean really over moderating too. Never giving warnings, just suspensions and bans. It took me a long time to learn membership management and not ruling with an iron fist. Same thing goes with team collaboration. I had a lot of trouble maintaining a strong staff team because I ruled as a dictator and didn't consider what others would think. I'd say I'm much better about it now. But bless the staff members on some of my older boards that stood by me when I was ****ing crazy!

I must admit adverts on an empty forum is bloody annoying, also people with 50 sections of the forum that are all empty.

Over moderating has killed many a forum as well.

Another thing that bothers me is when the site owner/admin doesn't even respond to a new member. Right now, through one of my forum related services on Fiverr, I am helping a new forum site with activity. No one responded to most of my posts - OK fine, it is a new site, no problem there at all. BUT, not even my "introduction" post in their Intro forum? You would think the owner/admin would at least provide some response to help out. Nope.

Keep it fresh, people! Help our your own site.

For a new forum ALL moderators and admin should be responding to the intro threads.

Members have taken the time to find your site and make a post, bloody respond and say thanks and welcome to the site, ENGAGE the new members otherwise they will leave quick smart.

Mine was no dedicate time to write content nor invite people.