Why do so many forums fail within the first year?

Many of us have seen countless communities start up and then close down within a year. What causes these failures?

Share what you think are some factors that result in community failure. Ultimately, this thread may be able to serve as a list of things not to do for new admins.

Many times, a forum's failure is because is was started with the wrong intentions and for the wrong reasons. See below:

• Wrong reasons to start a forum:
  • To rebel or get back at another forum/website
  • As a hate site
  • To make money
  • Because "starting a forum is cool" (i.e., it's the latest fad)
• Right reasons to start a forum:
  • You are genuinely interested in the subject/niche, and you have a strong passion. (You don't necessarily need to be an expert in your field, but it does help... see: http://www.adminaddict.net/forum/co...-site-domain-full-blown-brand-4695/#post55974)
  • You have knowledge in the niche and would like to learn more about it, or share your knowledge with others.
  • You would like to create a "house" of like-minded people who share a common interest or passion, and would like to create positive and productive discussion.

If you have started your forum for the right reasons, there is still room for error and you run the risk of failing soon.

• Reasons your forum will be likely to fail:
  • Failure to generate new content on a regular basis.
    • You must create dozens of threads and polls per day, and make plenty of posts per day, in order to initially get the pendulum of activity going.
  • Failure to promote (either not at all, or improperly)
  • Failure to make your community user friendly (in interface and in interaction amongst members)
  • Making the board private (forcing users to register to access content, or limiting thread views for unregistered members)
  • Plastering the forum with advertisements

I look forward to hearing what you guys have to add, and hopefully this can become an excellent thread with great at-a-glance tips.
I hope that what I have mentioned thus far can be beneficial to some.

 

I made my forum because i had a passion in gaming, Its failing atm because i dont create enough content, as soon as i did i saw a boost in traffic (extremely small) through search engines by Google Analytics (adding to the homepage, wordpress), i guess when i get some spare time ill add alot more..

And with MW2 coming out on tuesday i guess i could try and make some tips/videos and such for single and multiplayer..

 

Not thinking through on the concept. Tossing up yet another ___ site may not get traffic, finding a need for a forum is huge. Peggys forum is an example.

I really do not think it takes quantity for a successful forum. Waynes forum (vbcodex) will be successful, little posting is done there at the moment, but when the time is right it will be a huge resource. I certainly check it daily.

I strongly believe AA will do well because there are nice accommodating owners. I know there are alternative forums for admins but I really do not desire to seek them out, esp based on some comments about them people I respect have made.

In our case it was a matter of not getting the resources we needed from another site, and to create a little nicer atmosphere.

 

I know my forums have failed because of what Nick posted lol. I look forward to seeing what everyone says so that my new project doesn't fail.

 

Actually, I would like to add that one of the reasons it *could* fail is that the person who builds up the forum is not really a people's person. An admin who doesn't take in well suggestions, feedback, criticism, and pretty much is doesn't have the right attitude to interact with users. I feel as if many people who make forums are looking for an easy way to gain money and they think that they would get members within the second of them making communities. People, NO wrong! It takes much more than that and you don't need an advertising team a mod team JUST when you start your forum, yes one or two mods is fine to start, but not a whole army, and advertising, when you do it yourself (obviously in a non-spammy matter) you get personal with the users, telling them why they should join your forum, it shows that the admin cares and that he is interested on his site's well being.

Also, people who think paid posting works instantly(or works at all) usually give up after not seeing the results at the moment. If you do pay for paid posting, take in mind that you pay for the moment and not for a life time member, the paid poster is there and you received no traffic besides the poster, get other means! Advertise and create content yourself, again this makes it more personal with your users, make content that users would see as interesting, unique and written by yourself. Paid posting COULD work, but the possibilities of that are slim to none.

X3 A good design never hurts, it's the first thing your users see when you get to your site. Though, in my experience, same as choosing a application to design, the first forum in the niche that interests the user could be the only forum in the niche that they go to. Perhaps they would join others, but not be as active as the first forum they joined which caught their attention, so pretty much design and content is top priority for me.

Make the design look good and user friendly and the content hot so the users would NEVER want to go.

Also, people on free hosting and free domains saying 'I won't pay for hosting or a domain until I know my website will be successful', dude, okay, don't pay for hosting, but at LEAST get a nice domain! Your domain do not have to say the name of your niche, it would be nice, though getting a unique domain could make an impact.

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If an admin starts with the mind set at: 'I don't know about my forum, I'm going to fail, no users visit my forum, it's failing' you will fail, you will ultimately give up and cross that forum you made as a failure. BAD! You have to have perseverance and keep up, advertise the hell out of your site, whore yourself.

My personal experience:

Pisoga was a REALLY good anime site, the reason it failed at the end was because the admin before me was a person who did not take suggestions, didn't work well as a team, and was not really knowledgeable nor did he take time to learn the back end. I, myself, am TRYING to learn everything I can so my users could have the best experience on my sites, thanks to Dave(OneupDave) helping me, we've tried to achieve this and will keep trying. My users are my family, and I protect them from ANYONE who wants to hurt them. Pisoga is the one who got me into designing and learning the back end of administrating, you don't have to start knowledgeable, you have to have interest. I was so interested in both the well being of Pisoga and designing, that three years later, I'm Pisoga's admin and many of my mods and users say that they think I'm one of the best, although there are some who prefer the old Kuri drama back, even after the chaos though, some users have stayed and my mods always tell me 'I'll always be there' just recently my site got down(server failure) and we have no backups, only the one of when we made the change, but it was almost a week since we transfered, so we lost many days of fixing and many days of posting, when I told this to my mods they said 'Don't worry, we'll help you get it back up' that there just makes me feel like I'm doing things right and that I have achieved the confidence of my staff, which doesn't guarantee success, but it's one step forward.


I think that if you have the right attitude from the get go(perseverance and at least a tea spoon of confidence), you take time to know the basics on making a site/forum and you have the right mindset, about anything can be achieved. Personal experience.

 

Lots of reasons contribute to the failure of a forum within a year but the most important one as per my opinion is setting high and unrealistic expectations from day one and losing patience when those dream goals are not realised which in turn leads to lack of interest in the forum. Such forums are destined to die sooner than later. Forum building is like building a brand and the more time you give it the better it turns out to be. Setting realistic expectations and chalking up monthly targets rather than long term ones are my way of going about it.

 

i have been on a few forums that failed within a year.

1. the best admin left and the other just couldnt be bothered and left without any notice, leaving the forum with no staff. it became full of spam, porn and trolls. in the end nobody bothered coming on to it.

2. the admin fell out with eachother 8 months of the forum being around, and one decided to delete all the members accounts and most of the posts. after that, out of the 35 members, only 5 bothered reregistering and the admin closed the forum and started again. this time both admins forums have been going for nearly 2 years, so they did something right in the end.

3. there was a forum and it was going very well, managed to get 70 members in a few months but then the admin gave up on it and gave it to someone he met on another forum, without even telling his co-admin about this. he decided to just redirect members to his other forum and close this one, so co-admin and global mod opened their own forum together. the forum he sent the members to wasnt very good, and not many members joined.

 

I'd add that a forum fails much like a business fails. I've learned this from personal experience, but you absolutely cannot drift in your intent. Like a good business, a forum needs to have a plan. I don't necessarily mean that there needs to be a written-out forum plan like you would have a physical business plan, but you should know your niche, average user, and where you want the forum to go.

In my specific instance, I run a Christian forum. There are dozens of them that would be defined as large or big boards. The largest of which probably covers any topic you could conceive for a Christian to have. Now it's a bit different in that I'm dealing with a faith, so there is a sort of impetus not there with other forum topics in one sense. However, there are hundreds of small forums that can be defined as "active" yet not necessarily successful. They'll close down, move, or merge and shuffle around when the owner needs to save money or just gets tired of keeping up for a small audience.

In my case, we sprinted out of the gates, hitting 2K and then 3K members within about two and three years. (In my personal definition, I'd consider it a success.) We were one of the first results on the major search engines, we had folks signing up daily, and so on. Yet i became a victim of that success. I started the forum off to work with my Bible studies and give people and outlet for discussion. Originally, I opened the content directly to replies; this didn't work because with such an open format, everyone posted and I found myself reading through pages and pages of material and literally rehashing the same arguments because someone new signed up and wanted to argue the same points as on the last page using the same counter-points. We had the staff (numbering 4-5) to handle this, but we all became burnt out with these duties and then the typical duties of running a forum.

I shut the discussion out of the Bible study forum but moved it to the general forum. Best decision I ever made. We thrived. Then I got the bright idea to start cutting down on some topics that were just creating fights back and forth. Basically we censored certain heated topics to help out with moderator/admin duties. Terrible, terrible idea. We cut the forum activity to a minimum pretty quickly, we lost SE position, and activity really waned down to literally 5-10 active members.

To make a wordy post end soon here, we opened things back up too far, and then came back to that original healthy middle. We're thriving again and about to re-pass 3K members (after I pruned quite a few inactive accounts as part of the purge). If I had made the call to stick at the original vision, we'd be larger and better off than today. However, against my better judgment, I listed to others and really wavered in my decisions. It really almost cost me a forum.

That's not to say you cannot make adjustments on the fly. Forum owners just need a bit of a mission with a target. If you start going with the wind, you'll get blown every which way.

 

I concur with your points. Having that Vision/Mission Statement to me is the tone for things to follow. I can tell you were trying to balance, it's a tricky thing, more so I can imagine with your content target -- faith.

Thanks for sharing your testimony on this. Makes a tremendous amount of sense as it really speaks to longevity.

 

Most people want instant success

Most people do not understand what it takes to promote a forum

Most people are not willing to do what it takes to promote a forum.

Most people do not have the dedication for a long term project

 

I'd say the first and last parts of Kevin's posts explain most bad forums I've seen. Especially when people complain about inactivity and say they're giving up forever. Great reason never to succeed then, now nor in the future.

Or the people who read success as 'quick money'. Forums have never been easy, quick money.

 

Lack of content, for sure. If you have an up-to-date and insightful number of threads that are regularly updated, then you're bound to attract sufficient interest.

I also think that promotion is KEY. I've set up a Twitter account, Facebook fan page, Youtube account, Digg account and intend on doing much more once I upgrade to VB4.

PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE!

 

If there one thing that makes a fourm successful is that it's treated as more than just a place to post messages, it has to be a true community. I've frequented a gaming forum that's part of a popular gaming site. When you look on there, it's not just messages about the site. it's a place where people go to talk about there interests, meet friends, and have fun. add in all the other things you guys mentioned: consistent content updates, a active staff, promotion, and a clear idea of what the forum should be about, and you have a forum that is on it's way to being successful.

 

Be unique, don't copy other sites because it worked for them and they are successful. Chances are other people have gone to that other site and can see that your just a fraud.

 

Teach me ole wise one