Here is one piece of insight that I believe to be true, and especially in my niche.

The successful forums are very often those that revolve around an activity or a product where there is a real need or reliance on the other members of the community for information - for example writing trading strategies using easylanguage - there is a lack of customer support for this so the members rely on eachother.

The same applies to metatrader (software for automated trading strategies) and I think this was a big part of forexfactory.com's success, now a big time forum in the niche.

__________________
TradersLog.com Portal for traders and investors

It doesn't matter what forums work the best - you need to focus on what you think is the best. Digitalpoint grew from being a support community for its tool from being a webmasters community that it is today.

__________________
Virtual Pet Sites - Myspace Editors-web games

yea, amazing how big DP has become. I like the liberal attitude there, but I think the quality of the posts overall is way better at webmasterworld. Thinking of going to the pubcon in Vegas this year and finally meeting some of those guys in person!

__________________
TradersLog.com Portal for traders and investors

I don't think that you need your forum to revolve around a product or tool to be successful, or a forum that works best. There are plenty of forums that are just general discussion that talk about anything and are successful.

Any forum can be successful given the right amount of work put into it.

__________________
Immortality will come to such as are fit for it

yes, but these can be pretty hard to get off the ground (as far as I know!)

any tips for jump starting a more generalized forum appreciated : )

__________________
TradersLog.com Portal for traders and investors

Some forum niches are really hard to get into. Your fail rate is greatly increased when picking a subject such as ford mustang or something that has heavy competition. You have to remember that those forums have been around for 5-7 years and own most of the market.

I tend to focus on forums that are time sensitive. The earlier you get in on something the better. A good example would have been the apple iphone.

In the end everyone has their own opinion of what a successful forum is. Someone people are in it for the money and some are in it for the fun of it. Its really up to you.

__________________
Coming Soon

I would highly advise against starting a general forum just because there are so many and your fail rate would be pretty high.

What you could do is start 5 forums and later merge them together. That would require a lot of work tho.

__________________
Coming Soon

agreed, I chose to go into a competitive niche and it's a challenge. In the future I'd like to use a tool like wordtracker to identify an underserved area -

just checked out your forum - seems to be doing really well!!!

__________________
TradersLog.com Portal for traders and investors

Really you just have to search and checkout your competition and see what they are doing and how you can improve upon it but yeah next time I would suggest a niche that isnt very developed.

Thanks but its not really my forum. I just develop and manage it.

__________________
Coming Soon

When I first started my chat forum someone said to me "A forum without a focus never succeeds". But, I'm pleased to say we have no focus but we do have a thriving, happy and very friendly community and I'm very proud of what I have achieved