How much of a role does luck play in forum success?

Or if you're one of those people who doesn't believe in luck for whatever reason, read the title as 'events outside your control'.

Either way, I think a lot of community managers and admin sites kind of underestimate how much of a site's success seems to depend on things like random chance and simply setting up a site at the right time. I've seen plenty of amateur run sites end up making it big despite what seems like all the odds stacked against them and sites run by kids as a hobby end up becoming their career. And I've also seen a lot of 'professionals' fail miserably in running websites and forums, marketing companies and start ups with a whole bunch of talented employees find their projects never catch on despite 'doing everything right'. They use social media, they make high quality videos, they have a nice site style, 'decent' content and everything else, then the site still ends up a ghost town and closes in six months.

So how much of a role does luck play in forum or community or website success? And be honest now, people tend to love to take responsibility when things go well and blame others when they fail (I know I do), so try and think objectively and not act like I'm attacking your experience or anything.

 

It can be successful with luck or skill. Personally, I think skill is the easier route.

 

It's more of a skill than luck because it takes skill to grow your community. It takes skill to come up with new content to keep your users entertained. It's also a skill to attract new members to your community. By that I mean, if you're not good with words and coming out with new content, your forum running will come to an end pretty fast. But, you're right, some forum owners do get lucky and find quicker success than others. But, this can also be because of their skills as a community owner. I never think about forum owners getting lucky, I just think about the skills it takes to build a community.

Also, I think luck plays a role when there's no other communities around and you're the first.

 

Skills and effort are both very, very important, but luck plays a role (perhaps a minor one) too. I know some forums who were managed by admins who completely lacked any graphic or coding skills and were even hosted on free hostings that became unbelievably popular. Sometimes, all it takes is one thread to be indexed by Google to bring in a massive amount of people, or one member that likes the forum so much that he spreads the voice and gets lots of new people to join. While that does require a bit of knowledge, it's mostly good luck.

 

I don't believe in luck for the success of a forum, because if you build a good community, members will join. It takes a lot of patience, hard work, and a creative mind to grow a successful forum.

You have to think of a plan on how you're going to kill the competition, that's what I'm doing.

 

I think skill is most important by far. There is an element of luck involved too.

 

I think it depends more on admins and niches

 

I would say it is quite important because with the amount of established forums nowadays are hard to compete with.

However money plays a bigger role in this in my opinion. If you have the cash and brains you can make any forum really active.

 

No kidding. You could pretty much make anything successful with an infinite budget. But you're right, a decent amount of cash certainly helps a forum become successful. I guess if you were seriously desperate (and extremely rich) you could always offer to pay absolutely anyone who joins and posts, that'd certainly rack up activity fast.