What forums are the easiest/hardest to build

I've noticed that some admin forums and gaming forums take forever to build and that it takes a good chunk out of your time to make these type of forums bigger. I also feel that some forums get lucky and find success quicker than others. But remember, the harder that you work, the more success you may find in the forum world especially on the internet.

So, in your opinion and being involved with forums for so long, what type of forums do you feel are the easiest to build? How about the hardest to build?

 

The easiest forums to build are ones about politics, religion, sex, and rights.
Start a gun rights forum and you'll have 1000 members by the end of the week.

 

Easiest to run would probably be any forum dedicated to something illegal. Set up a forum about 'hacking' (in the less legal sense), warez/torrents/copyright infringement or other dubious stuff and you end up with a good few thousand members in matter of weeks. Hell, while it's not technically illegal, look how fast that Mega service grew in just an hour or so. 100 000 users in just an hour, about a million in a day and in the top 150 websites within a week.*

Another easy type of forum to build would be one based on the hottest thing, something like a major movie, video game, book or other media that is super popular at the moment and is being hyped up like there's no tomorrow. In other words, starting a forum based on a breakout phenomenon while it's still new and ending up popular when it's at its peak. Works really well if the subject of all the hype turns out to have lasting appeal, become a long running series or maintains its popularity afterwards. However, it can also fail horribly if either the work, artist or subject is a one hit wonder with no long lasting popularity (I've seen many of these sites die due to picking a bad subject that dies down mere weeks or months afterwards, and just as many fail to catch on due to being about a subject with no real mainstream appeal like a single player game or a movie that bombed at the box office).

Finally, product/service support forums often do well if your product/service is popular. Lots of popular games and systems have absolutely massive forums for their support.

* Note: Neither this poster nor Admin Talk encourages or endorses people to set up sites dedicated to illegal acts. But it's an accurate point regardless, the more you say not to do something, the more popular it ends up being and many morally bankrupt websites do pretty well til they get sued.

As far as the most difficult to build forums go, I'd say one of the following:

One about a subject with no proven audience. I've considered a forum based on one of these, but I've often been hesistant due to how difficult it would be to promote. I mean, if your site's audience is already on similar forums or sites, you can do things like exchange links, post on forums with signatures, comment, send linkbacks/pingbacks/trackbacks, that kind of thing. If your forum has an audience not found easily due to a lack of similar sites, you have to basically promote from nothing. And you're never sure whether your site's failure means there's no audience or whether you're just not doing well at attracting it.

Admin forums are difficult too, although that's probably due to how many there are. Same reason promotion forums are difficult to build and make succeed.

 

I'll go a different direction...

The easiest to build are ones with a well defined niche where the owner/administrator has a knowledge and passion for the topic and the ability to communicate their ideas well and connect to the members.

The toughest are the forums which have no specific direction and where there is nothing specific to draw members there versus any other forum.

 

I'd think admin, general discussion, and gaming forums are the easiest to build, because you can get a lot of posts fast, since a lot people have knowledge in those forums, especially forum owners, and it allows you to complete a lot of post exchanges.

My forum was pretty hard to build, and that's the poker niche. But I wouldn't say it's the hardest. The hardest forums to build are the ones with little or no competition, because it'll be hard to get members interested in that topic, since there is a forum for pretty much every popular topic to discuss.

 

Define easy.

If there is a need for it, people will come. General forums will not last long. The best forums are those that are based around a niche.