10 reasons why forums/websites fail online

Recently I have witnessed a growing rise in the amount of new forums. Quite a large proportion of those I have seen are targeted towards web design and graphics. Out of the forums I’ve had, quite often than not, the displeasure of visiting; fail within the first month.

I would like to take this time to explain why forums fail and what you as a forum owner can do to establish an active community. I have split this article into ten bullet points that outline the contributing factors to failure.

No goals/Aims

When I created talkfreelance the first thing I did was create a goal. A website without a goal won’t succeed. My goal with talkfreelance still isn’t reached and probably won’t be for a very long time. Aims are short-term objectives; each week I make new aims for talkfreelance.

Wrong understanding of a business

Making money through a website shouldn’t be the primary objective of any business. Running a business isn’t about making money, let me make that clear. In order to run a successful business you must provide a product or service to the consumer that is of high quality and in demand. Making money from this is simply an outcome of the process. I didn’t wish to put adverts on talkfreelance for several months after acquiring the community and it’s for this sole reason that I didn’t.

Impatience

Probably the biggest downfall of a lot of forums. For some reason people seem to think success comes overnight, this isn’t the case. Creating an active community, quality product or service takes time and dedication. I put aside a great deal of time to concentrate on my website and I don’t expect to see great returns for a long while yet.

Failure to establish a competitive advantage

Another big one. I’m basing this article around forums (as you may have noticed) but this can be said for any business. Recently several other design/graphic forums have been opened offering nothing new over existing communities. You need to establish a competitive advantage, whether it’s by offering more features, cheaper price, faster service etc. Without establishing an advantage over your competitors you won’t succeed.

Poor quality of product

If you have an amazing product it only takes a few people to make you successful, think freeipod.com. Innovative idea, mass-market product and they launched at the best possible time. They didn’t actually spend a great deal on advertising at first, infact it was purely from word of mouth that the site became so popular. Your business will only ever be as successful as your product or service. If you’re offering a poor product/service then this will be reflected in the amount of sales generated.

Failure to identify customers

Who are your customers? What are their needs? What other sites interest them? What products are they buying? You need to identify your customers in order to effectively target them. Talkfreelance is fairly obvious; our customers are freelance designers, programmers, artists etc. A simple query on google for “freelance design” produces a mass of websites all relevant to my community. Don’t waste your money on websites irrelevant to your product, research your customers and advertise on the websites where your customers are likely to visit.

Poor marketing plan

Probably another big area to cover, but I’ll keep it short. If you think at how many times you actually see an advert before you click it, probably a few hundred times. Banner advertising is rather ineffective, don’t buy by the impression (I don’t anymore) especially on the larger traffic sites, your campaign could be maxed in one day and you will see a poor return. That’s why we have changed the way we currently sell advertising on talkfreelance, we now sell by the month and not the impression. If you’re going to buy banner adverts you have to buy in large quantities (100,000 impressions +) otherwise you just won’t see a decent return on your investment. You need to set out clear marketing plans, what sites you’re going to advertise on? How long are you going to advertise on these sites? What return do you expect? Always ask questions about the websites traffic before you confirm any deals, make sure they have a stat tracking facility otherwise you will be none the wiser on the outcome of your campaign. Leading on from the marketing, always ask questions on your website “Where did you find us?” follow up on your strategies, if 90% of users came through website A then invest more money into advertising on website A.

That’s all for now, I’ll have another article posted tomorrow!

Regards.