Is a "niche" forum Fastlane??

[kcw983]

I have found a niche where I believe a forum would fill some need. Would a forum with a few thousand members be an opportunity to jump on the fastlane?

What would you do to generate income streams?

How many members would you need to become fastlane?

How would you scale?

What type of expenses would you see running a forum?

What would the costs be to hire a programmer to create a forum? (Comparable to thefastlaneforum)


Any thing to watch out for or be aware of starting a forum?


Thank you for any and all info you can pass along.

[mrhahn]

It can definitely be fastlane if the forum gets popular.

What would you do to generate income streams?
Adsense, selling ad space to sponsors, marketing to your members either your own item or affiliate products, having a sales forum and charging for listings

How many members would you need to become fastlane?
It depends on your monetization method. For example, if you make money with adsense views, you need a lot of eyeballs.

How would you scale?
Get more members and exposure via SEO, social and viral marketing.

What type of expenses would you see running a forum?
Hosting and domain costs. You can start out cheaply with shared hosting then upgrade to vps/dedicated as the server load from more members affects your users' experience.

What would the costs be to hire a programmer to create a forum? (Comparable to thefastlaneforum)
You can use vbulletin ($195 or $285) or a free open source forum. Each option has its advantages or disadvantages.

Any thing to watch out for or be aware of starting a forum?
Spammers

[Inphinity]

Potentially, yes. Mrhahn has covered it quite well, but as an example, a forum for a niche interest such as desktop gaming could be sponsored by a major desktop gaming chainstore or manufacturer, or could be used as the basis to open an online store serving the niche.

[Kfleming]

People make big money with niche websites, including forums. Even though a niche may seem small never underestimate the reach of the internet - many of the internet entrepreneurs I know who have been successful didn't create a new market but simply chose a small niche, became an authority and completely dominated it via a blog, forum or e-commerce site.

I would also recommend vBulletin - it's important to note that starting a forum requires a lot more time / effort than a blog because of the moderation required.

[MJDeMarco]

I wouldn't recommend a forum to my worst enemy. I've run this place for 4 years and lets just say, it wouldn't support anything about my lifestyle ... it works as a brand support item / lead gen tool, not as a revenue model. IMO.

[Kfleming]

I wouldn't recommend a forum to my worst enemy. I've run this place for 4 years and lets just say, it wouldn't support anything about my lifestyle ... it works as a brand support item / lead gen tool, not as a revenue model. IMO.

Unless you charge $200 / month as a paid membership

A relatively small "exclusive" community of 200 members at $200 a month is $40,000 in rev a month. I think I would rather take that over 5,000 members at $10 a month which is also doable but would require much more moderation etc..

[Kfleming]

PS.. if you go and do that now I expect a %.

[TK1]

Unless you charge $200 / month as a paid membership

A relatively small "exclusive" community of 200 members at $200 a month is $40,000 in rev a month. I think I would rather take that over 5,000 members at $10 a month which is also doable but would require much more moderation etc..

Can you (or anybody else) post some links to forums like that? Not that I don't believe you, but I'm just curious how it would look like or what kind of deal people would pay for 100, 200 a month. Thanks

[kcw983]

PS.. if you go and do that now I expect a %.

It's a deal!



I too would like to see a model for a paid membership forum. What does it take to make people want to pay x amount of dollars to become a member? Why would they do this with so many other free channels of information out there? (just brainstorming here)

MJ, If you don't mind me asking, how many members does thefastlaneforum.com have? Do you think it is worth maintaining/moderating the forum for the additional leads/sales that evolve from the site? Do you moderate the forum yourself, or can you hire out trusted mods to fit the need as it becomes larger?

Let me know if these questions are out of line and I will shut up!!!


Thanks for the info

[Inphinity]

I wouldn't recommend a forum to my worst enemy. I've run this place for 4 years and lets just say, it wouldn't support anything about my lifestyle ... it works as a brand support item / lead gen tool, not as a revenue model. IMO.

Agreed, a forum on it's own is very difficult to get to the point of being a proper fastlane business. But there are plenty of ways you can use a forum as the core of something that can be

[nickswan]

I would suggest having a product or solution for a niche and building a community around that rather than just a forum around a niche.
It takes quite a large forum to be able to generate income from the forum alone.

Nick

[kcw983]

Agreed, a forum on it's own is very difficult to get to the point of being a proper fastlane business. But there are plenty of ways you can use a forum as the core of something that can be

Please explain what a person might use a forum for to spring to that next level??
You have my attention.

[Kfleming]

I would suggest having a product or solution for a niche and building a community around that rather than just a forum around a niche.
It takes quite a large forum to be able to generate income from the forum alone.

Nick

Actually you don't need a large forum to make a lot of money.

STACKTHATMONEY Private Forums

That forum only has 50 members and makes $10,000 a month by charging $200 / month for a subscription, not quite fastlane but 100 or 200 members would definitely be getting there.

Here is another example of a forum taking the paid membership route - PPV Playbook - Winning Tactics for PPV, PPC, Media Buys and Social Marketing

You don't have to build a massive 10,000 or 100,000 member forum to be successful you just need to create a quality community and build a lot of perceived value.

If you want a better explanation of exactly what perceived value is about check out this thread I created - Are You a Honda Civic or an Aston Martin? with a post that was originally from my blog.

[kcw983]

Actually you don't need a large forum to make a lot of money.

STACKTHATMONEY Private Forums

That forum only has 50 members and makes $10,000 a month by charging $200 / month for a subscription, not quite fastlane but 100 or 200 members would definitely be getting there.

Here is another example of a forum taking the paid membership route - PPV Playbook - Winning Tactics for PPV, PPC, Media Buys and Social Marketing

You don't have to build a massive 10,000 or 100,000 member forum to be successful you just need to create a quality community and build a lot of perceived value.

If you want a better explanation of exactly what perceived value is about check out this thread I created - Are You a Honda Civic or an Aston Martin? with a post that was originally from my blog.

My only question would be: How do you maintain the number of members each month? It seems like the turnover would be high with members deciding not to continue membership. How do you sustain this?


Without a fee based structure how would you do to make your forum fastlane? Would you need to sell products/services? Would you create a lead gen tool like MJ has done so very brilliantly? If so what would you lead your blog up to and why?

Let's see how we can take a forum fastlane as quick as possible.

I have the niche and would have market dominance, but I cannot see it being a paid membership structure for this one.

[Kfleming]

My only question would be: How do you maintain the number of members each month? It seems like the turnover would be high with members deciding not to continue membership. How do you sustain this?


Without a fee based structure how would you do to make your forum fastlane? Would you need to sell products/services? Would you create a lead gen tool like MJ has done so very brilliantly? If so what would you lead your blog up to and why?

Let's see how we can take a forum fastlane as quick as possible.

I have the niche and would have market dominance, but I cannot see it being a paid membership structure for this one.

By limiting the amount of people that can join you create demand - you then have a waiting list that people can join and send out an alert at the beginning of each month when the new spots open up.

[V8Bill]

Membership sites can be very lucrative - you're on the right track.

I created a forum based membership site for a stock market trader who advertised his trades after he did them (the same hour). $99 per month, several hundred clients (not thousands) and I as a 1/3 partner was pulling (some months) $30k+ semi-passive; many months 20k+ semi-passive. Eventually sold my share back to the original trader who wanted to "steer his own ship" for WELL over half a mill (I agreed not to disclose the exact amount). Kaching, my first fastlane change back when I didn't even know what fastlane was. Took about 2 years to get to that point but I was earning passive along the way. I eventually got up on stage and spoke (giving me valuable public speaking experience along the way) and learned how easy it was to make a lot of cash servicing a (relatively) small amount of people.

The costs were almost zero (compared to the income). A VBulletin license, a paid member's plug in and paypal fees. We also sprang for a developer with a computer science degree to handle some more difficult coding I wasn't capable of integrating Amember with VBulletin and Paypal...etc. One weekend we all met in Fiji (at a related wealth seminar) and opened the bar to all our members. It cost about $7,000 I think in drinks but the goodwill was enormous. One month we made over 250k because I hopped up on stage and promised a one hour "orientation call to all who signed up that day for a year" We were swamped. That taught me that people want help, want to be lead and want to talk. I spent months after that just talking to members - more goodwill. It was a fun experience and I'd like to do it again to be honest.

Go for it but keep the value high and obvious. In our case members (new traders) where leveraging off the experience of a more experienced trader (the site still exists and has grown since then). There was no conflict because the trader was selling dissolving options trades (credit spreads) so there was no benefit for him to have people follow his trade. We won, member's won; it was a true win-win.

Even though it was some work for me I could answer posts at my leisure from anywhere in the world (just a laptop was all I needed) and I really enjoyed the interaction so it wasn't really "work" for me, more like something interesting to do. Watching members make money was a bonus, watching them lose (occasionally) was a drawback but the passive income and final pay off was (to say the least) surprising!

If you think you can get any more than 1,000 members you can keep the membership down to less than $100 a month. Not too cheap though; they have to value the membership. We also offered a "pay for 10 months and get 2 months free" to encourage yearly memberships.