What you rather (two forum competition scenarios) have?

1. Your forum being hugely successful and popular, but your competitor sites being even more hugely successful and popular.

2. Or your forum being fairly inactive, but your competitors being far less active still?

As a forum admin, what makes you feel better? A popular site in a niche with many larger competitor sites, or being the best in a small pond so to speak?

 

I'd rather pop the eyes out of my competition and skull[****][****][****][****] them to death, but since that's not a poll option ...

I'd rather carve out a successful niche in sports, stealing members from the likes of ESPN and official team sites.
It means I offer something or some things not even they offer members.

 

I don't think the poll covers enough options and portrays a mindset that doesn't cross the finish line in a race.

1.) If you are doing good, but have several competitors doing better, you shouldn't be settling for 3rd or 4th or 5th place. (just to name a few) You should be researching to see why they are doing that much better, add incentives, update your features, make sure you have optimal customer support, and most definitely provide something extra your competitors don't.

2.) An unpopular site with dead competition sounds like a micro-niche that's struggling and needs expanding to live off of. Unless of course it's just a hobby site with no real intentions of revenue. Once you dominate one micro-niche, you should be exploring similar / relative micro-niches that fit in the same category and start dominating those markets to. Eventually you'll slowly build up a community that dominates the largest competitors in all the prime niche markets.

If I was to add an option to vote on, I would add::: 3.) Dominate a category killer market and continue to maintain the foothold into the foreseeable future. Constantly bettering it's best and providing optimal product / service support.

just my opinion of course amongst millions of others,

Eric Lyon

 

I know exactly what you mean, but keep in mind there's a very interesting reason I chose the options I did here.

It's to test out the old question of motivation in website/forum running, and whether people are happier with/more motivated by success on its accord or doing better than others. Of course, everyone wants to dominate a category killer market and hold that foothold in the foreseeable future, it's the best possible situation in every way.

But the question is whether basically you're motivated by keeping up with the joneses and outdoing them in every way or by success on a statistical/non emotional level. Are you driven by being 'better' than you'd be happier being the most successful in a dying niche simply because you know you're the 'king' in said niche? Or are you driven on a more... 'disconnected' level, with your interests purely being if your site has so many members/posts/whatever and hence you'd be happier being a medium fish in a big pond?

I'm just curious what motivates forum owners more. What kind of 'success' they'd be happier with. Indeed, I remember reading at least one psychology article about this somewhere, which suggested certain people would rather associate with those less rich/popular/'successful' than themselves to feel better or something of a similar nature.

So in a situation like this, which would you prefer? I mean, everyone would want to be the biggest site in the biggest niche with two million members and a hundred million posts, but there needs to be some sort of debate here...

 

I think the conflict of interest and where I have to agree to disagree is in the following subconscious message the 2 poll questions emulate:

1.) I'm successful but not doing as well as many of my competitors. I'll just stop here and not try anymore.

2.) Yay! I've dominated a niche market hardly anyone is interested in and my competition died off because of the lack of interest. I think i'll just stop expanding and hold my position as the top of a dead niche.

That may not be the message you intended for people see / feel in the poll, however that's the feeling I got and why I felt the need to add a 3rd option that was more positive than negative. In a nut shell your 2 questions are basically asking people to settle on inferior results.

But then, I may be reading into it way to much, I sometimes have a tendency to over-analyse things. lol

Eric Lyon

 

I'd rather have an option of beating the community down. So, I'll go with poll 1 as I like having competition and being able to work harder, to find even more success. With a competitor, it means you still have a lot more room to expand and grow.

 

I don't care what other forums are doing ill just go by mine i like if my forum is active so that option if someone elses is then oh well maybe i can bring some of there members over to my forum

 

traffic and revenue.

 

In huge niches there's enough members for everyone if your Forum offers something unique to the rest.

I would always prefer to be popular even if my competitors was more so.

 

I'd rather have the second option, because I like to win. It's also easier to increase the activity on your forum, when you have the #1 forum in that niche, assuming the niche has room for growth, and it's not discussing something like weather.

 

The internet isn't zero sum. Someone who visits my competitor's site can still also visit mine... often at the same time thanks to being able to open multiple tabs.

That said, I'm on friendly terms with a lot of my "competition", but since I do not see it as a competition, there is no reason to get competitive about it. We meet for drinks, food, other things when we're at shows. We collaborate.

I walk with some of the titans in the industry of my niche. Here I am, just a guy with a laptop, smart phone, and a website, sitting at the same table with the President of a car company and the editors of major magazines and newspapers... and a few of them I can genuinely call friends.

I measure my success in the skill of my writing and in the response I get from my readers. I'm not doing this to get rich.