Quick... whats a good price to pay for this forum...

Ah, ok.

So do you think many of those people could be enticed back? If there has been no reason for them to come by, if you create a new reason, how many do you think you could essentially recover?

 

That's the wrong approach to this situation. The first thing you do is run the site as it was before, and continue running it until everyone's comfortable with your ownership.

Once activity is back to form, go ahead and merge it. But until then, don't change too much. Just try to entice them to come back.

Sometimes it isn't the problem of the community, sometimes it's the problem that the forum software got boring for the community. Provide something new, and fresh, that'll entice them to come back.

 

Great to have this discussion going.

I run a state specific gun forum. This is a national gun forum. So while it is in the same niche, it is a different gameplan... ie... my existing forum members would be interested in the national forum, however not all national forum guys would be in my state specific. =)

It makes zero sense to merge the two forums, considering it is only 12k posts... and my existing forum would generate those in about two weeks.

I am getting access to the analytics to see where the traffic is and will go from there.

 

VB4 license could get you anywhere between $80-$130ish.

That is none of your concern, that was a purchase that he made for his forum and he cannot expect to make money on it.

 

To me, data like how much traffic the site gets, if there is any revenue (and how much) and the niche of the forum are far more important factors than how many posts and members are on the site. 12,830 posts would be virtually worthless if it's about some game that nobody plays anymore, for example. Or, 12,830 posts could be of negative value if it's all file sharing. On the other hand, if those 12,830 posts are all about mega-yachts and those 76 active members are all people who are currently in the market to buy one, then the forum could be worth tens of thousands of dollars easily.

 

I can honestly say that I have never left a forum because their software got boring. While I have definitely requested certain features from insanely basic forums before, for the most part, I'm not going to simply get bored with their software choice.

What kinds of features do you have in mind that should be added to keep the software fresh?

 

Without any solid revenue it's really hard to put a dollar value on the forum. How has he been monetizing it in the past? Does he keep in contact with the users? It sounds to me like he needs to cut his losses- just because he sunk time and money into something that doesn't mean it has any value.