Starting an NFL Forum - Advice

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!

Though it would be nice if you could find a way to do it. It sounds like a place for uncontrolled bickering, at least on team forums there is some kind of limit as to what can be said. On a neutral NFL forum you are likely to spend too much time refereeing or monitoring to make it worth your while.

Possibly... but I wonder how much of the appeal of posting on a forum is to be with those you identify with

It's goona be hard to start it up,get exposure and make people want to go there instead of the other established forums(but there aren't many). The only good NFL global forum I know is FF and they claim to have/do have 60k+ registered members and about 1k+ logged in members pretty much at all times, so it's decently active. They also post news within seconds of it being reported, so that's awesome.

Just ban whiner-raider trolls, Dallas trolls, and Pissburgh trolls from the beginning and over half of your problems will go away.

Sports Hernia":30wk72dz said:

Just ban whiner-raider trolls, Dallas trolls, and Pissburgh trolls from the beginning and over half of your problems will go away.

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I rest my case.

I'm going to give it a shot. Locked up the domain http://www.NFL-Forums.com and will give it shot. I have my IPB license installed and will be developing it for a few months or so. Not going to do anything for the skin yet, since IPB is getting overhauled in 4.0 sometime in Q2, but I can get other stuff going on it. Feel free to register and follow/help if you want.

Make sure you have clear rules, mods you trust, and a thick skin.

lvnginhwktwn":2woebppl said:

Sports Hernia":2woebppl said:

Just ban whiner-raider trolls, Dallas trolls, and Pissburgh trolls from the beginning and over half of your problems will go away.

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I rest my case.

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Thank you for proving my point about trolls. :th2thumbs:

Praise in the open....chastise in private. We are just humans.....well ....some of us are...different. LOL

Sports Hernia":tl56677o said:

lvnginhwktwn":tl56677o said:

Sports Hernia":tl56677o said:

Just ban whiner-raider trolls, Dallas trolls, and Pissburgh trolls from the beginning and over half of your problems will go away.

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I rest my case.

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Thank you for proving my point about trolls. :th2thumbs:

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Glad I could help :lol:

Will Rog give you grief for using "NFL" in the domain name?

We'll see

You might want to lock down a secondary domain just in case you get a cease and desist from Roger's lawyers.

Probably a really good idea ^^^^^

This is cool. I've also been trying to find a good all-NFL board but they are harder to come by than you might think. Let us know when it's up and running so I can register and start spewing my bullshit there

The only NFL board I ever go to is http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/2000211- ... racing-nfl - and it's crazy there. It's mostly a free-for-all consisting of mostly a bunch of dorks between the ages of 16 - 25 that make top 5 lists and flame other teams/players. They even go as far as betting their accounts on games quite regularly. I would say if there's anything I've learned from that site, it's that moderation is a good thing when it comes to message boards...especially an all-encompassing NFL board where there is going to be a lot of heated debate and trash talk. I also learned that the internet is in need of a good NFL message board. Looking forward to seeing this.

That kind of forum already exists its called sportshoopla.com and it's busy and allows swearing. Kind of cool as fans of many teams comment on just about every breakimg story..

What forum is FF mentioned above?

nIdahoSeahawk":25i1bffw 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!

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I would really like to see this become successful! Not sure what help I could be, but willing to assist.

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!

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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.

/r/NFL does it better than anyone else.