I created this forum in June last year for other forum admins.
Solidghost asked me something and it gave me the idea to create some kind of affiliates network for forum admins.
These affiliates would help each other with advertising and posting on each others forums.
The idea itself was (and still is) great, but things haven't turned out the way I expected and hoped.
Joining FAN is too complicated, becoming affiliated requires to much work of both admins and people don't get enough in return or think they don't have to do much and then get disappointed because they don't see any results.
So with only a few forums in the directory, only a handfull of them activly looking for affiliates I think it's safe to say that the idea of FAN failed.

Although I am happy with how this forum has grown and the community we (yes, you too) created.
Think we're a nice and friendly bunch of people here that can and want to help each other with everything related to running forums.
And I'm not planning to give this up. So don't worry about that
But I do think it's time to find something new to replace the "network", because it hasn't been succesfull.
It's time to find a new way that could help people to create activity and help admins to advertise their site.
And I still believe that doing post exchanges are a great way to create that activity and advertise at the same time.

So maybe it's time to drop "FAN" and create some other kind of post exchange network/directory.
We could change the directory so that everybody that is looking for post exchanges can submit their site there, look for other forums that are looking for post exchanges,...
Or just drop the directory and do it on the forum itself.

But basically I'm looking for new ideas.
So please, give your suggestions, opinions, idea's, critics... about FAN, what it was and what I could (or should) become.

Also would like to thank all members that joined the network. I know you are probably disappointed about the results that joining FAN gave you, but thanks that you stayed nice and kept visiting this forum.

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It indeed a great idea.
I still believe it is. But it became clear that it didn't really work.
Too much work, not enough in return, not enough people in the directory, to complicated to join & get affiliates and so on...
So that's why I thought that it would perhaps be a good idea to create just a post exchange directory.
Where people can submit their site to if they are looking for post exchanges.

The forum itself will definatly stay the way it is.
I'm very happy to see how this place is growing, how members help each other, the new members that sign up,...
April has been a top month so far, both in traffic and in activity.
So that's definatly something I'm happy about.
And have no plans to get rid of the forum or make any big changes.

But maybe it's a good idea to create that post exchange directory, and combine it a bit with FAN.
Being a full FAN-member then means that you are looking for long term post exchanges or combine the post exchange with something else.

Anyway, still a bit brainstorming, so feel free to give any idea's or suggestions. Even if you think they're stupid
Thanks for all the feedback by the way! Really appreciate it!

All forums that join FAN are new forums and not big.
Purpose is that FAN helps your forum, and not that your forum helps FAN
And those small forums are the forums that FAN should help.

I like that idea
But gonna wait a bit longer before I make any decissions.
Want to get a few more ideas and opinions.

Another thing you could do, which I found out can help, is submit it to directories and not just google. Something like
http://itsallgame.com, they are a normal web directory. They increase your page rank and they also have like three others there which help. plus if you go to my sabn network forum and look at my affiliates, their are alot of other directories there in which you could list FAN on, it will increase page rank and members.

Here is another idea I thought about, you ever think about doing a FAN web ring? And like they do on Tinyportal and SMF a Site of the Month type thing which could increase members..

Well for the FOTM thing, you could always increase it to those who are not full fan members. This way it shows new comers that you still get benefits from joining our happy little community.

If you go to http://www.sabnnetwork.org and scroll all the way to the bottom of the frontpage you will see the web directory there.

Another idea could in the directory would be to do specialized catagories for each forum that joins.

For like different Genres of forums...

Game
-Console
-Role Playing
-Portable

Something like that a main catagory then sub catagories with in that and even sub-sub catagories with in those like for Console games you could have sub catagories in there for Xbox, Playstation, Game Cube, etc..For Role Playing you could have sub catagories, Table top, Play by Post, Play by Email, Etc...Something like that, if you need help with that I offer my services to help out there....