nIdahoSeahawk":3v10admg said:
So, I'm thinking of starting a neutral ground NFL forum, seeing as a google search for NFL forums yields little results. I just haven't had much success in past websites, as I've chosen saturated markets. Knowing that it is a surprisingly small amount competition, is it worth my time? Any advice/help making it successful would be great too!
The best I advice I can offer is to have a high level of patience and a low expectation.
It takes awhile to get enough regulars to get to the point where you have enough interesting discussion to entice new 'guys' to join. It's a long process. Don't expect overnight success or you'll be quickly disappointed.
It's not going to be a profit maker for you. If you go in knowing this and keep the expectations low, it'll be much easier to keep the patience. The reason I say it's not a money maker (and I know Aros and RockHawk can attest to this) is that the more popular the forum, the more the servers cost, and that will eat up just about any revenue you can make. I won't say that eventually you can't possibly turn a tiny profit, but don't expect to and it'll be easier for you.
I've helped set up and run sports fans forums in the past for football, baseball, hockey etc. and that is honestly about the best two pieces of quick advice I could give you.
One last piece of advice is not to run around spamming other message boards to attract people. Most of the people that will attract are not the type you want to build a base with, and you'll end up pissing off owners of other sites and that won't help you at all. If you want to speed your success and build a base of fans, I'd suggest before you even open your forum, talk to owners of message boards that are only team oriented and don't have general NFL discussion areas and see if they would work with you. This could open up partnerships for you that could attract people on a more permanent basis, plus you'd probably get extra tidbits of advice from the owners of these sites that may help you move forward with yours.