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Are community sites worth developing?

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Basically the title. Is there any value in developing a community or forum site or do most people stick to social media now?
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
It can be worth if it's very specific community and if the site is managed better than its competitors. So it depends on niche and your knowledge on the niche. For instance if you are plumber in Chicago starting a forum on plumbers in Chicago is definitely worth trying.
 
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I think the competition is increased so much. There are thousands of community or forum websites or apps are available. These are already ranked and have high monthly traffic.
But If you really want to start a community website or forum. You have to do too much struggle to rank your website.
Gustavo Woltmann.
 
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@redshift I ran a community website in England and what @poweredbyme says is the key to a successful community website (or any website)
It can be worth if it's very specific community and if the site is managed better than its competitors.
To beat Facebook you need to provide a better solution than Facebook. But it's also an option to integrate Facebook rather than challenge it and use it to your advantage since a large proportion of visitors will now use Facebook some or all of the time. I recommend using the .org extension or .org.uk if you are in the U.K. or .org.xx in other countries. Sections to add are 1. News 2. Business Directory 3. Jobs 4. Events 5. Traffic & Weather 6. Accommodation 7. Restaurants 8. Attractions. Beyond 8 menu tabs find somewhere else like a menu dropdown or the sidebar or footer. It doesn't take much time to update but it's very important to keep the main pages fresh with new content. Building the site will take the most time. Expect seasonal peaks and dips in traffic and linked to that seasonal peaks and troughs in ad revenue. The one thing that will make or break your site is how often you update it. That's why so many people either don't start or quit.
 
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@redshift I ran a community website in England and what @poweredbyme says is the key to a successful community website (or any website)

To beat Facebook you need to provide a better solution than Facebook. But it's also an option to integrate Facebook rather than challenge it and use it to your advantage since a large proportion of visitors will now use Facebook some or all of the time. I recommend using the .org extension or .org.uk if you are in the U.K. or .org.xx in other countries. Sections to add are 1. News 2. Business Directory 3. Jobs 4. Events 5. Traffic & Weather 6. Accommodation 7. Restaurants 8. Attractions. Beyond 8 menu tabs find somewhere else like a menu dropdown or the sidebar or footer. It doesn't take much time to update but it's very important to keep the main pages fresh with new content. Building the site will take the most time. Expect seasonal peaks and dips in traffic and linked to that seasonal peaks and troughs in ad revenue. The one thing that will make or break your site is how often you update it. That's why so many people either don't start or quit.

I like to challenge. Long years ago I developed a site to compete with G blogger. It took 1 year to get few thousands active bloggers and the website was receiving 2-3 new comers daily. SEO was easy and there were not many free blogging platforms. For personal financial reasons I had to sell it for cheap. The buyer had little knowledge on website management and the site slowly died. Probably FB didn't exist in those years.

Today it's too difficult but not impossible if you have enough knowledge and resources.
 
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