Let's say your forum niche is about a certain type of game - and you've seen success for that game... When do you think it's time to start branching out and try to introduce new type of forums - about other games, so that your community can attract a wider audience?

If you've branched out on your community, what was it like? Was it hard to do at first?

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I suppose you would know when its time to branch out to another game, its either when activity falls or people stop posting in the forums and go more into the general discussion area.

When www.cncgamer.com used to be open, it was mainly for Command And Conquer: Tiberan Sun - but then it branched out into other games like Command And Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars & alot of the other C&C EA games, and they pulled it off well. - well that was till the site died altogether

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Well first of all, you have to decide whether or not you want to branch out. We have threads started all the time that are not about forums - they're about blogs or directories or eCommerce...but that doesn't mean we're going to branch out into a general webmaster forum just because people talk about it.

If you do want to branch out, there has to be a need for it...and I think that this is best determined by the amount of discussion your members make on this separate topic. If they're talking about it a substantial amount of the time, then sure, go ahead and include it in your forums.

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One thing I have noticed is that people are more likely to join a community if it is dedicated to the particular subject that they are interested in. Maybe it's percieved as less 'watered down' and more authoritative. At least that's my observation. With that in mind, if you do branch into an area with a decent sized market my advice would be to create a seperate community and use the advertising power of your first to promote it rather than weaken the focus of an existing site.

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