Community type sites

[Kari]

Hey folks

just a quick question..
I discovered SocialEngine.com thanks to a link in another thread.

My question is, do community type sites / forums pay off ?

It's something I've never even considered doing, but something has piqued my interest

 

[Adam H]

My question is, do community type sites / forums pay off ?

Depends on your definition of "pay off" and what you see your self getting out of it, if you mean financially yes they can, but generally they are alot more work, time, stress and cost to run over a normal ecommerce/blog in the same niche. They generally earn substantially less based on an a like for like traffic scale but thats two fold as to what the end goal is, e,g sustainable recurring revenue stream for years to come.........or nice chunk of cash on a sale a couple of years down the line, the later is not as ripe as it used to be with forums and user generated content in general is on the down and has been for years.

If you've not got the budget to buy an established site ( which can be equally as challenging ) then I would recommend forgetting about the financial side of things and do it because you love the niche and have a passion and knowledge for it, if your a social person and like to deal with all warps of life then it could be quite rewarding. Its not a short term project to make a quick buck generally.

P.s , My comments are more based on Forums rather than social platforms like Social engine.

 

[Helmuts]

If you play it right - yes!

I bought a long dead Latvian internet business forum ibf.lv 3 years ago, migrated from phpbb (one of the very earliest versions) to wp, restored, cleaned most of the spam, relaunched it 9 months ago + I'm doing fb lives on this topic.

Now, I've started running monthly meetups (for small fee - still they make some profit).

Moneywise - I'm in small pluses.
Authority-wise - no comments (you will make your name known to your niche in no time)
Connection-wise - A+++++++ solution to boost the number and quality of people from your niche youŗe in.

The dark side:
It is very, very, very difficult to start a new online forum/community these days and most attempts will be just a waste of time and energy > FB groups are huge competition to almost any niche (apart from adult, guns and gaming).

And you will need to invest tonnes of time, patience and good amounts of cash in building it.

My advice: Just do it .. The value of new fantastic (possible) connections can change your life and give you opportunities you've haven't had before.

best of luck!
H