Negotiating forums to exist within your own forum site.

24Hours · Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 34

I was going to post this in the other thread by capebretoner about buying forums to merge but the idea I had was distinctly different enough, I thought, to warrant its own thread.

I have a framework on my forum site (24HourForums.com) that, long-term, centers around Member-Owned forums. You can read the Intro to it here:

http://www.24hourforums.com/view_topic.php?id=2145&forum_id=32

There's a section of forums called Member-Owned but I think eventually all my forums may become just that.

Anyway, it is meant for either businesses, hobbyists, club managers, or just those with a passion for something to run their own forum. But capebretoner made me realize it could also be for ENTIRE forum sites. So, let's say you have a struggling forum site on a particular theme - SEO, gardening, healthcare, stockpicking, whatever. You might want to consider running your own forum, taking your members with you, on another site with more members and activity. Why? Well, I spelled out the benefits in the link above but basically you get to "recruit" mor members to your cause or theme because you have more exposure, and you get to benefit from the other features and improvements of the site to help make your supporters loyal. No maintenance, and you get to benefit from the overall growth. If you were into educating about something, you just got more people to educate around you, etc.

There could also be partnership arrangments (as alluded to in the link) where we work together to grow your forum and share revenue off of any sponsorship dollars we get for it (I have individual forum sponsorship in place).

Each forum is like its own City in my view, and that is the vision for my site I am thinking a great community development idea is to merge smaller forums into one via having your own forum hosted on a forum site you have just, very probably, increased the odds of more traffic and and conduct your mission in a feature-rich dynamic place.

You give up control on some levels obviously but if the partner is right and a general passion and aiming high standard is shared, it could be more than worth it and is hard to see what the big downside risk would be. My main concern would be not having some cheapass spammy group come in, or degenerate sleezebags, etc.

Radical? I don't know for sure, but it is my current structure. I just haven't made an effort to reach out to other FORUM owners about it. I am actually going to go edit that into that Intro now...

- Frank
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24Hours · Joined: 27 Nov 2006 Posts: 34

Well, it's young, but so far the idea is working out! Got a new one I am proud of and she is making money - ClassicNancy's Graphic Design ... this will take a good 6 months to a year probably before I know partnering like this is a good idea.
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