If You Bought Small-Business-Forum.net What Would You Do?

[Owen]

Just a fun little question. If you managed to gather the funds to buy SBF what would you change/do?

Personally I would give it a custom design and get a new name, similar to the one it has now but just a little different. c:

Cheers ;D

[Fulcrum]

Absolutely nothing out of the gate and I'd keep the current management in place.

[MyITGuy]

Personally I would give it a custom design and get a new name, similar to the one it has now but just a little different.

With those two items on the board, especially changing the name, then why buy SBF at all?

[wordpresshelpr]

I would immediately implement a paid membership program that includes benefits such as advertising here on the site or in certain classified sections of this forum, as well as whole slew of other ways to provide tremendous value to small biz owners while making a killing in the process.

[Nelson]

I would keep SBF growing "organic", making sure that this forum have valuable users and quality content. No way i would allow ads.

[Harold Mansfield]

I would keep SBF growing "organic", making sure that this forum have valuable users and quality content. No way i would allow ads.
So you'd run it out of your own pocket?

[Nelson]

So you'd run it out of your own pocket?

To be honest, i don't know what costs imply to host and take care of this forum. Conssidering that they aren't very big, i would support it by miself and i would create a donation section also.

If the expenses are consistent i would set an anual fee to be payed by users.But there is a downside:it could cumber the growth.

[Harold Mansfield]

To be honest, i don't know what costs imply to host and take care of this forum. Conssidering that they aren't very big, i would support it by miself and i would create a donation section also..

Have you ever put a plan like this into action? If so, how did it work and were you able to cover expenses and grow it?

[Nelson]

Have you ever put a plan like this into action? If so, how did it work and were you able to cover expenses and grow it?

Ok...ok...fine.
You Busted me! Harold Mansfield 1- Nelson 0. :)

[Harold Mansfield]

Ok...ok...fine.
You Busted me! Harold Mansfield 1- Nelson 0. :)
Ha. I wasn't trying to get you, but things cost money and time and sometimes people forget that.
Also, why shouldn't people make money on their product or service?

[turboguy]

To be honest, i don't know what costs imply to host and take care of this forum.

I don't know what it costs to host and take care of THIS forum but do have some experience with forums in general. First off there is a big difference in having a forum and having a successful one. I would say that 80%+ of the forums that are started die from lack of members. Forum software costs are not bad. This forum runs on vBulletin software which has an upfront cost of a few hundred the last I looked and a continuing cost of just under a hundred a year (I haven't looked at their prices in years). There are some good free forum software available as well. I use SMF on my forum which is free and pretty decent. I used vBulletin until I had a problem and got upset with their support. Hosting can be the biggest cost. I pay $ 250.00 a year for my forum hosting. The busier the forum the more hosting will cost.

The biggest cost of running a forum is time and the busier the forum the more time it will take. Deleting spam is one of the big time consumers. On some forums keeping the members civil can be a problem. That doesn't seem to be much of an issue here but I think spam and figuring out who is spamming and who is posting information is a fine line that can be hard to define.

Making money on a forum is tough. Unless you have content that has unique value charging members will not work and people just won't pay to belong. Advertising can generate some money but with most forums it isn't going to be a large sum. I do participate in one forum that generates big bucks from advertising (maybe as much as a million gross) but most forums with advertising get enough to cover expenses if they are lucky.

There is a lot of time in running a forum and my hat is off to VanGogh and the crew here for doing a really good job and having a nice forum. Finding good people to help can also be a problem.

If someone dreams of being a millionaire starting a forum is probably not the way to do that.

[kimoonyx]

Why? Is it for sale? :)

[Owen]

Why? Is it for sale? :)

I wish. I could give Van Gogh a shiny nickel for it ;) Feel free to email me Van Gogh if you're willing to sell SBF for a whopping $0.05 (that was a lot like 300 years ago)

[tallen]

Be careful what you wish for! Sometimes you might just get it... (and then reality sets in, and what you actually got is not really what you thought it would be...)

[Bobjob]

When I first joined I thought there should be a general business questions section. I felt like my "Purchase Competition" question didn't fall into any listed thread category. In retrospect, less is more and keeping things consolidated is a good thing. So I wouldn't change a thing.

[chris maxwell]

Sell Ad Space...