Why do so many forums fail?

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[Harro]

I can't give any number, but there are many forums that die after just a couple weeks or months.
They haven't been able to get enough traffic, members and posts to create a succesfull and active forum.

Why do you think this happens so often?
Admin/staff don't do enough for it, tough niche,..?

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[kevinr]

Alot of it has to do with members, An admin can only create the site, and start things going. If people just aren't interested then it will go nowhere.

An old saying goes "you can show the horse to the water, but you can't make it drink" I accommodate all my members within reason, and even my two existing forums have posts asking the members for their input, but no-one seems to want to say anything, so how can I as an admin give my members anything?

I must admit that I am at that stage again, where I feel like closing my forums down since activity is low, but I'll wait until after christmas.

[stoliSambuca]

Nothing can really survive unless it can sustain itself financially.  This applies to forums also IMO.  It's very difficult to make money using forums, so most of forums are not sustaining themselves financially.  Thus, many forum owners just give up after a while.

[danrak]

I do not think a lot of people who start a forum realize how much work goes into it.  They believe "if you build it they will come."  As most of us know, that isn't going to happen.  You need to keep the forum going until you reach crictal mass and can back off of it a little bit.  Then there is the fact it is harder to get into most popular ad networks such as Tribal Fusion with a forum, so you end up floating more of the bills.

[Harro]

Agree with you.
And then they don't work enough on the forum and are surprised to see that it stays dead.
Forums indeed more difficult to start then most people think.
Installing and setting it up is very easy... but managing and make it successful is something else....

[stoliSambuca]

Installing and setting it up is very easy... but managing and make it successful is something else....

Installation has become so much easier over the years.  You really had to know your stuff to set up a forum 10+ years ago, but you're really not required to be tech-savvy to set up a forum today.  As long as you feel comfortable using the internet, you can set up your own forum.

[Nuke]

Simply put, if a forum can't maintain an active, growing member base, the forum will fail. There really is nothing beyond the members, and if there isn't anything that peaks their interest, they won't post, and therefore the forum will die.

[etali]

What do you define as successful?  Just curious.

I think a lot of forums get abandoned because the owner didn't realise how much work it would be.  I think that a lot of the time they are started during holiday periods, or when someone just learned how to make a web site, or something like that, then when the interest wanes they give up.

My forum isn't 'successful' yet - and I've been running it a very long time.  It hasn't 'failed' yet either in my opinion though, because I'm still plugging away

[Harro]

I think you can call a forum successful if you are happy with how things are going.
So basically you have to make your own definition.
Could be that you think it's successful because you get regular signups and new active members, few active members but with good postcounts, great traffic stats, good earnings,...
Depends on the goals you've set up for yourself.

[stoliSambuca]

What do you define as successful?  Just curious.

In the end, success is defined on your own terms.  If your goal is to accumulate 1000 posts and if you reach that, then it's success for you.  However, I generally believe that a "successful forum" should keep creating new threads and replies without your creating threads and replying, though you are probably required to do some maintenance work like deleting forum Spam posts.

[gastongr]

Most of people think that it is easy to have a forum and transform it into an active community, they are wrong.
It requieres a lot of promotion, administration time, posting time, etc etc.

The main reasons why i think forums fail are:
1) Lack of promotion, they think members will come alone.
2) Lack of Administrators activity, if you are the forum owner be an example for your users and post new threads, give them something to talk about.
3) Lack of insentivation for members to come and post. You must have something special that will make people want to be in your forum and not in the competor's one.
4) And last but not least, lack of persistece.
In most of cases a forum will take a lot of time and effort before it's stable and has a good base of regular users. Some administrators quit their proyects very soon because they expected things to be easier.

I myselft find it very difficult to improve my forum, and i'm far from having a good, stable community.
I can tell you i have spent A LOT of hours and money in the past years trying to get my forum bigger but nothing has really made a big change yet. However i'll not quit it.

[Harro]

2) Lack of Administrators activity, if you are the forum owner be an example for your users and post new threads, give them something to talk about.

That's probably the most important.
Noticed this on my other forum.
Stopped posting there because I didn't have the time, was on vacation a bit later and lost most of my interest in it.
Now it's almost completly dead...

[stoliSambuca]

That's probably the most important.
Noticed this on my other forum.
Stopped posting there because I didn't have the time, was on vacation a bit later and lost most of my interest in it.
Now it's almost completly dead...

I've been thinking lately that you often need to hire another person or two to get your forum very active.  I do know a couple of forums started up by only one person, but most one-man/one-woman powered forums seem to struggle.

[Harro]

Not sure about it.
You can do post exchanges or create multiple accounts to get a bit the same effect.

[Serendipity]

You COULD create a multiple account as said before, but that's only if you're really desperate. Everyone has their own writing style so I think it'd be pretty easy to tell if the same person had two accounts. Admin activity is ESSENTIAL. If even the owner won't take the time to post, why should anybody else? What you should do is see if you have any friends that spend a lot of time on the internet and just have them join and talk to you over the board. That will generate some traffic and slowly encourage others to join in. You'll also want to make sure your first few posts aren't idiotic. People like to know that there are intelligent posters on the boards.

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