Forums can be a rewarding experience and project for you, not only financially if done right but also as a community for you and your users to enjoy. But starting a forum isn’t always the easiest with so many different aspects to consider and with so many things that could go wrong in your first week. But Admin Loop is here to help you out. With the Forum How-To Guide, we will assist you with everything that you will need to know about starting a forum and this week, it’s all about choosing a niche.
How do you choose a niche?
Of all aspects of creating & managing a forum, choosing a niche when you have no idea what you want to do can be extremely difficult. It’s one aspect that not many people can truly help you with because, in the end, it all comes down to you.
The problem with choosing a niche that you may love is that a lot of niches have a large number of forums that are already established and doing well. It can be off-putting at first especially as a newcomer, why would someone join my new forum over that one with over a million members?
The important thing is to differentiate yourself from every other forum. This is a much easier task when you go for a forum with a more specific niche where you can easily make yourself unique and different from other forums (if there are any at all for your niche). But more about this later on in the article about the planning process for your forum.
Choosing a niche should not be something that is done within a few seconds. Take your time, make sure you understand everything you are about to get into and then confirm your niche choice. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with doing so, it’s always best to not go with a niche that you have zero interest or knowledge in. Even if a certain niche may seem like a great money-maker, you may end up having trouble developing your forum properly without a proper interest in that niche thus affecting your potential income/revenue.
For example: As someone who has no interest or knowledge of anime, it would be a poor decision for me to create an anime forum. I wouldn’t be able to discuss it with my users and it would be harder for me to create things for the forum and promote it.
Starting a forum in a niche that you have an interest in can be extremely beneficial as it won’t feel like a chore when you want to work on your forum and start posting content on it. It also will help create a better image of your forum to potential users who can see that the owner is fully behind the community and actively participating in discussions.
Furthermore, it may be a great idea to go further into a niche to help get away from a large number of forums in that niche. If you love gaming, why not create a community for a specific developer or game?
Sites that can help inspire me
There’s nothing wrong with having trouble coming up with a niche for a forum that you may be interested in starting. There are several methods that you can utilise to help you with choosing a niche including:
- Admin Loop (Community Forum) – Yes, that’s right, Admin Loop can help you out. We are a community that was created to help you out for these types of problems so if you need help, feel free to leave a comment on any of our posts, post a thread on our forum or send us an email.
- Forum Promotion Brainstorming Section – You would have noticed me mentioning Forum Promotion in several different posts and FP can definitely help you if you need help choosing a niche. They have a dedicated Brainstorming section where users will help others with ideas.
- Google Trends – This is a tool that will help you find different ideas that are trending over a specific time period. Whilst, this may not always help with a forum niche, it can certainly help you find out what type of topics are proving popular with people around the world.
How did you go about choosing a niche for your forum?
As ever, if you have any questions, issues or just want to discuss anything discussed here, leave a comment below or feel free to send us an email.