First I own the nikon DSLR and been active on couple photo forums. In general I have seen some talk about how current big nikon forums are not so good and what are the issues with them.

And there i see an opportunity to start yet another forum. I already have spare VB and a gallery license so immediate $$ investment would be only buying a Nikon related domain. Now I do understand that there is lots of investment of time and patience after forum is setup.

But do you, given this background there is an opportunity, worth putting in efforts?

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It's definitely possible, it's up to you if you want to spend the time and money to do it. To compete with big sites you surely need a good amount of dough though.

To the above: You dont need lots of money, its helpful but aslong as you offer something unique and something that no one else has then you should be fine.

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I'd like to point out that's easier said than done unless you have money. The vast majority of users simply don't care about how you have some small improvements or a few unique things, you need to be spending money (and time) into long term marketing (like SEO).

You say that you understand the issues that other similar forums have, however you need to know how you are going to resolve this. If you don't have a clear plan of how you are going to resolve these issues then you might find yourself with a forum that is just exactly the same as all the other forums out there.

The best thing I think that you can do is list the issues with other forms and then detail how you are going to handle these.