Don't give up on your community

Establishing a thriving online community is no easy feat. Despite pouring your heart and soul into it, it's disheartening to witness minimal growth and progress after dedicating countless hours and resources. Perhaps you anticipated amassing a membership of over 500 within six months, only to find out you have just 50. But don't let this setback discourage you.

"Persistence is key to maintaining a community. If you don't want to pour in your heart and soul - don't bother to create it in the first place."

The first 6 months are the hardest!

Building an online community from scratch is an arduous task. It requires you to entice new members, but it's unlikely for visitors to join if they stumble upon a forum with only a handful of members and posts. This is when you need to take charge and create engaging content, generate buzz about your community, and spread the word.

You'll invest countless hours daily in crafting content and promoting your site. Even after 50 hours of work, attracting just one new member should be celebrated as a triumph, not a setback.

Every little thing is a success

It's important not to set your goals too high when building an online community. Every member, post, and new thread is a success. Even if you don't have a large following of 500 members, having 25 active and engaged members is a significant accomplishment.

Many people give up after achieving so much, which is a shame. If you're feeling discouraged, take a moment to look through all the content on your site and reflect on what you've accomplished. Focus on the members you've attracted and build on your progress.

It's crucial to be realistic and not compare yourself to sites with tens of thousands of members and millions of posts. Such comparisons can be demoralizing. Instead, find a similar-sized or similarly-aged site and use it as motivation. If they gained ten new members this week, aim to attract twelve to your community next week.

Laying down a foundation

Thriving online communities require a solid foundation. Once you generate initial excitement, growth becomes more manageable. Your first 100 members are the most significant as they provide a solid base. When you're able to delegate content creation to others, you're on your way to success.

However, it's important to remain realistic about the time it takes to achieve success. You may have to navigate through some obstacles before you even set foot on the path to success. Regardless, you must keep moving forward and never give up. Persistence is key, and if you keep at it, you will undoubtedly succeed.

What are some communities that you have given up too early and regretted ever since?

 

[Reverie]

The first 6 months are the hardest!

I must agree with this completely! The first 6 months is where you're struggling to find the member base, and as an admin you're likely to be having to create a lot of new content. It's also when you're wanting to do many great things, but you're having to decide when to release these ideas. Plus around 6 months is where staff roll-over is pretty common as well so you might feel like you're having to "re-design" the wheel a bit.

Setting achievable goals is super important because then you will feel success, and that may help continue pushing you.

What are some communities that you have given up too early and regretted ever since?

One community I gave up before even starting always bothered me. It was called inCommotion. There were a lot of leaks about the forum released and it bothered me, and so I chose to not move forward with it. I put a lot of work into it though, but just decided not to and I was a member at a few forums for a while and that was one of the first times I quit forums for a short period in 2008ish. Came back a few months later and continued for a bit, then took another break. Otherwise, I never gave up on a forum too early. I did disappear on my last forum which I regret but that's due to life reasons.