How long

[azraell]

What is the typical length of time to get an active forum? How long until you consider your game not desirable? Just curious. I spend a lot of time on my forum, monitoring it, doing admin work, etc, I just wonder if it is all a waste of time. If the game never takes off, I have wasted time and money. I have advertised my site every where I could think of but can't seem to be able to attract players. A lot of people visit but no one signs up. Just wondering if I stick it out? I make RP posts very frequently so that there are examples out there and stories that might encourage others.

Thanks.

[Kami]

There are SO many factors to RP success. Personally I'd give it at least a year of consistent advertising and RPing and making sure your SEO is as good as possible (eg having info pages containing key words about your genre and plot and so on).

It also depends on your definition of success. I would be happy with a half dozen dedicated players, but have been fortunate in the past to have far exceeded that. Other people may not be happy with that.

I think one of the biggest mistakes tho is trying to start with the intention of being a big game. It's easy to scale up your plot and rules to accommodate a growing member base, but much harder to scale down when numbers don't meet your expectations.

[azraell]

Thank you. I would be happy with even four members, that I would consider a success. I don't want it to be huge, it just gets boring rping all the stories myself.

[Kami]

I definitely understand. I hope your forum finds footing soon!

[» Poe the Villain]

It's easy to feel like your forum has failed, if you're not getting members or you feel like your traffic isn't what it should be. Most really successful RP forums start out fairly small, and then once people realize it isn't going to fall inactive after a few weeks or a month, people join. You really have to stick to it in order to gain members, because a forum is only really dead when the administrator gives up on it.

Like Kami said, as well, having a half a dozen members on an rp forum is pretty good. Especially, since most people will have more than one character on said RP forum. As long as you and the members you have are having fun RPing, people will gradually come.

Another thing, that you could look at though, is your forum aesthetically. I am generally attracted to forums that look nice, that are well put together, and have easy to find information. You could post your forum in the "Get Opinions About Your Forum" board, and see what people think about it, and get suggestions if you are open to them!

I wish you the best of luck with your fourm!

[azraell]

Thanks, Poe. I do have my forum in the Get Feedback, but only got one person's feedback, Kami. I took her feedback and made several of the changes she recommended. I even have a side bar with the step to get involved. Here is the site if you would like to take a look:
Realm of Ulster

[» Poe the Villain]

I'll definitely see what sort of feedback I can give you over on the Opinions board! I noticed that your originally opinion thread hasn't been bumped before, which might the culprit in you not receiving anymore feedback. You can bump your thread every 12 hours over there, and that helps bring attention to you. If you let your post fall down too far, then people will just assume (at least I will) that you don't want anymore feedback.

[Former Member]

I know it's already been said before, kind of, but there really isn't a typical length of time for forums to become successful. You could be an instant success or it could be something that takes years. Part of that has to do with fan bases, especially for niche forums and RP's. It's never a waste of time as long as it's something you're passionate about.

I know one thing I've done is advertised the idea of my forum or mentioned it. I started a thread asking people what they'd like to see on a [category] forum if I were to make one and a bunch of ideas started rolling in and I'm not in the process of actually making some of that a reality. And then I was able to post on another site that I'm a member of what the forum will be for, giving them an idea of what to expect and, again, encouraging them to chip in some ideas.

Doing things like that gets people's attention so you can possibly start creating a little base of people who could be there when the forum opens up. And then I make updates about it on things like Twitter as well. Just whatever I can do to get people's attention that isn't invasive or obnoxious. Even talking to personal friends who are interested in the topic.

I don't know if any of that sounded like anything new to you to think about or if it was just nonsensical babbling, but just some thoughts I had on it.

[azraell]

Thanks, MZ. I have tried everything. I even paid to have my FB site, promoted, nothing...I am not giving up, I am going to stick it out, just gets frustrating at times.

[Kami]

Aug 18, 2016 10:41:16 GMT -8 azraell said:

Thanks, MZ. I have tried everything. I even paid to have my FB site, promoted, nothing...I am not giving up, I am going to stick it out, just gets frustrating at times.

I gotta say like... Not gonna lie, I think you're being a little too easily frustrated.

When I gave your site a rate a couple of weeks ago, you had just started within the month. It is very, very, very rare for a site -- especially one with an original setting -- to take off within this period of time. Some people get lucky, but it's just that: luck. If you're frustrated now, what's gonna happen in six months? You are building a user base from scratch because of your original setting. Even fandom forums -- forums that already have an existing user base to get members from -- do not have success within the first six months of their creation. Even though it's been several years since I moderated the advert board here, not much has changed -- sites that you see boasting x amount of members tend to have been around for six months or longer.

RP forums as a whole are also not as popular as they were in the early 2000s; while there are still too many around to count, the pool of potential users is even smaller for you because in addition to not having a pre-existing fanbase to draw users from, people in general are seeking RP forums out less than they used to. The success you may have had in 2003 is going to be vastly different from the success you'll have in 2016 and beyond. Case in point:

Google trends for the term "RP forum" spiked around 2007-2008: www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=rp%20forum

"Forum RPG" spiked in 2007: www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=forum%20rpg

"Original RP" spiked in 2004: www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=original%20rp


And so on and so forth. In all likelihood you will not see much success within the first year of your forum's life. Some people can get really lucky and hit all the right keywords and create their forum at just the right moment. Most everyone else, however, has to put in a LOT of time and effort to even have a moderate amount of success.

---

Also. The fact that you paid real money to promote your forum at this stage is honestly wild to me. I have never, ever, spent a single cent on advertising. I get that you want more success right away but quite frankly this is not the way to get it; I don't know what your advertising budget is, but I do know how facebook advertising works -- the reach you'd get from their cheap advertising plans is honestly not even worth it. You pay per impression so that means the person viewing the ad does not have to even CLICK on your advertisement in order for that to count against your budget. Considering the amount of people who use adblock on facebook because of how invasive their advertisement posts are, the amount of money you'll wind up spending to have a noticeable amount of traffic to your site from facebook is exorbitant for a hobby forum. Paying for exposure on facebook will be more successful for people with huge budgets: companies, mainly. Even celebrity facebook pages do not pay for this type of advertising generally speaking because of how expensive it will get in order to even be remotely effective.

It is far more effective -- both in terms of success, cost, and time -- if you concentrate on spreading your link manually for search bots to index (affiliations, posted advertisements, topsites, in your forum signature while you're active on a forum, social media, etc) and continue generating content that has relevant keywords (example: an 'about' thread that reads something like "Welcome to (site), an original fantasy RP" and similar phrasing explaining your site's content) in order to improve your SEO rankings, you will have far better success than throwing your money at an advertising strategy that will cost you more than the members you'd get.

[azraell]

Kami,

Thanks, my frustration isn't something that will keep me from continuing with my site, it is just that a frustration, and we as people are allowed to feel frustrated. I have at least 23 visitors a day, that is what leads to some of the frustration, they come but don't stay. Honestly I can't figure out if they don't stay because of something with the site or if it is just a subject they aren't into, or what it is, that also leads to the frustration. I want my forum to be successful (again having at least 4 players would be good for me). 

Believe me I didn't spend a lot on the facebook promote, I was just checking it out, only spent a couple bucks on it to try it and it did nothing so I didn't put much into it. I know it has only been 2 months and I have been trying to rp as much as possible but RP'ing along can get a bit tedious when you are playing all parts. I should just write a book, lol.

[Kami]

Oh I'm not saying you can't be frustrated, sorry! I didn't mean to come across that way. I was just trying to say like, I get why it's frustrating but considering the stuff I pointed out in my last post to try and let that pass, since honestly it's not about what you're doing wrong.

Hopefully that makes sense!

[azraell]

Kami,

Ok, I thought you were being harsh, nice to know I took it the wrong way!

[Star's Legacy]

Aug 18, 2016 16:18:50 GMT -8 azraell said:

Kami,

Thanks, my frustration isn't something that will keep me from continuing with my site, it is just that a frustration, and we as people are allowed to feel frustrated. I have at least 23 visitors a day, that is what leads to some of the frustration, they come but don't stay. Honestly I can't figure out if they don't stay because of something with the site or if it is just a subject they aren't into, or what it is, that also leads to the frustration. I want my forum to be successful (again having at least 4 players would be good for me). 

Believe me I didn't spend a lot on the facebook promote, I was just checking it out, only spent a couple bucks on it to try it and it did nothing so I didn't put much into it. I know it has only been 2 months and I have been trying to rp as much as possible but RP'ing along can get a bit tedious when you are playing all parts. I should just write a book, lol.

The majority of visitors that you see on your forum per day are most likely google and other search engine bots checking out your forum not actual people. So you really are not seeing 23 people come across your forum in a day and deciding not to stay, you may only have had 5 or so real people. Also a reason for people coming by and not staying is simply for advertising. You have an advertisement section I assume? So with that most visitors visiting that section will only be interested in putting their forum name out there rather than potentially looking for a new site to join. ^^

[Kami]

Aug 18, 2016 16:33:06 GMT -8 azraell said:

Kami,

Ok, I thought you were being harsh, nice to know I took it the wrong way!

Sorry! Tone is hard to convey online, hope it wasn't too upsetting!