What is a Goal for your forum?

What is a goal for your forum(s) that you hope to achieve by year end?

 

I don't have any goals, none at all. I think if you set yourself goals you'll only end up either frustrated or burnt out running a forum trying to achieve them.

 

This +1

Used to be I'd build a forum and have goals and plans of what I wanted to achieve. These days I just wing it. I'm not in it to make money, I'm in it for enjoyment.

 

Well, let's see...

• Have 6.5 million members
• Have 30+ million posts
• Earning about $20k a month in advertisements

Almost there. Just gotta keep at it.

--Realistically, I don't have a clue. I actually don't care. I like to play around on my sites, try new things, new looks, etc. I don't have members, don't want members. I visit other sites to post and converse on, if at all. I think I only have licenses now to pass time.

 

Do not really have any goals I guess just member's,post as said above.

 

I'd love to have more long term Centmin Mod LEMP stack users who are well versed in Centmin Mod sign up on my forums and participate . I know they're out there

 

oh i realized I didn't answer my own question XD

I dont have any real major goals but something I hope to accomplish(I say it this way since it is not something set in stone but if it happens, it happens) is to hit 500K by year end. We can do it possibly, but i think it'll probably be around Jan-Feb if it happens(Which is in time for our 3 year bday)

 

I like running small knit communities, less headaches, you know everyone who posts pretty well type situation. Never ran forums to make money or gain some sort of notoriety.

 

I am the same way.
I have the desire to own a Big Board with hundres of thousands of members but then I am like

"Um....Do i really want to deal with hundreds of thousands of people at once?"

It's difficult enough wne fights break out between 2-3 people and 4-5 people wanna jump in. I can imagine how crazy it would be if i had 800 people at once

I run my site at a loss because i do it for fun not to make money off my content/users though i am always being told i should at least run ads

 

I have with one site had a goal. When I created an Aquarium Fish Species website (not a forum) and wanted to scan every page from a fish species book and upload images, plus add the text for them onto my website as fast as possible. Took me a month to do with over 800 pages of fish listed. Hard work, spent a huge amount of my free time doing it in that month, why I'd never set myself a goal like that again with any site.

Was fun doing it, finally getting it all done. But the amount of time I ended spending doing it each day, because wanted to get it done fast (the goal). Looking back now it wasn't even funny.

 

I don't have any goals, everything is done purely because I enjoy it.

 

I was fortunate and entered into 2009 with zero debt...$90k house paid for, trucks paid for, etc. Outside of paying my monthly expenses, nothing else to worry about.

So, my goal for the past 6 years has been to NOT return to my McD's days of high school, flipping burgers to pay bills. Thus far, so good

(BTW: I'm 47...the impetus for my BIG forum started in September 1992)

 

To say you don't want a big board because you don't want the headache of working with that many people is like saying you don't want a lot of money because you don't want the headache of depositing the money, investing the money, and buying things. I find it odd that some people don't want that. It really isn't that hard dealing with people and if you don't want to do it, hire a virtual assistant that will go through your contact us emails, answer the ones they can, and give you the list of the ones that you need to answer. Right now, I only deal with a small handful of emails a month. I have put together a great roster of staff and they handle most of the members issues that post in our tickets and I get tagged in the ones that they can not handle (which comes out to maybe 1-2 a month on a "busy" month for me).

My goals are to further dominate the gaming niche, insert my site into the news, reviews, and videos realm, create an active youtube channel community (kind of dead currently), and further the unique experience our users have when they come to the site. Things to maintain would be a fun, helpful, and friendly staff that will maintain those traits and trickle in to the members. If you have problem staff, despite what they do for you, get rid of em. Best words of advice with my 10 years in this game. I started that way, got away from it for a few years...that's when things when stagnant...changed back to my old ways and we are now flourishing and old school members are commenting on the much improved environment around the entire site, and more specifically the staff team.

 

You mention making money from a big board because that's why you run a forum for, to make money from it. Not everyone runs a forum for that purpose and why I wouldn't want a big board personally. The time involved running one I would hate (not that I even have the time to do it), also you'd have to start using ads to fund the cost of running one (so you have no choice but use ads then), I hate using ads on a forum. And there's no guarantee today that ads can even make you enough to pay the cost of running a big board with more and more people blocking ads than ever before.

So no, not everyone is interested in running a big board. I'd much sooner have a small forum that ticks over and can be affordable without having to start sticking adsense ads up on it. Running a forum is a hobby for me, something I enjoy doing and not interested in what I can make from running one. If I was, I'd already be showing ads to pay the shared hosting cost each year. I have an adsense account, don't use it though.

 

Who says I run my forum for money? You don't know me, nor do you know the history of me and my site. I mentioned money because that was an easy analogy, not that running a big board and making money goes hand in hand. Did you know gaming is one of the worst paying niches? No, you probably didn't. And did you know, I don't have the support of Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, or any of the game developers due to our content, thus can't go to them for direct advertising?! Nope, you probably didn't.

Why would anyone want to run something that fails? I personally think some people run their small sites because they can play God on them. If you have an inviting site with quality content and a great environment, you can not avoid becoming a big board. I knew nothing about running sites when I launched my site, only that I knew how to do things (modding) that others didn't and I wanted to share it with people. Heck, I had a friend set up everything for me...I didn't even know what HTML was, let alone running a site. I had no monetary goal with it, I was just happy chatting with people and sharing information with people that was hard to come by. I didn't make a penny on the site for about 3 years...I was never in it for the money, but it sure is a nice ROI now.

No time to run a big board?!?! I run my own chiropractic practice, I have a wife and a child, I workout and play sports 3-6x/week, and yet I still have time to work on my site. This is when "management" comes into play (as well as time management). You can't do everything because you think you will do it better. If you can delegate it and it be 80% of what it would be if you did it, but in less than half the time you could have gotten to it, then you are moving forward and doing the right thing. If you can't manage people, if you are an a**hole to people, or if you can't pick the right people for the job or staff, then yeah, you don't need to be running a big board...and probably shouldn't even be running a small board...bc let's face it, if you knew a site wasn't going to exist in 12 months, would you spend your time there knowing that all that time spent would be wasted? (Rhetorical question as I already know the answer) Running a big board has taught me quite a bit in managing people, which relates to a lot of other things now. Running a big board is fun and if you do it correctly, you can still enjoy the site and your community...you'll just have a lot more new faces commenting in your threads.

So again, if you create a welcoming environment AND have great content, there is no avoiding becoming a big board. Was it ever my goal? No. Did it happen? Yes.

 

Totally.. I'm god in my realm and everyone must worship me I'm collecting worshippers, come... join me on the dark side

Seriously though, for me, I'm not bothered about how small or large my forum is - I start a forum because I have an interest in a particular niche and, quite franky, I make a lousy member on other people's sites

 

Everybody knows you're only in for the money

 

Says the guy that always deletes his sites....pretty sure you didn't read a single thing from my post. I think you are just mad that I made a lot of valid points that you can't refute.

Edit: And if I was in it for the money, I'd have more than a single ad on my site lolol