Registration metrics are not important

When building a forum, it's easy to become fixated on getting as many members as possible. After all, a successful forum requires a large number of members, right? Not necessarily.
The number of members a forum has doesn't necessarily make it a good one. It's easy to come across a forum with thousands of members, but many of them might be automated spam registrations or fake members who were created to encourage others to join.

They might not even visit or contribute to the forum at all. So, having a large number of members doesn't guarantee that a forum is popular or of good quality.

What really makes a good forum is having members who are passionate about the community, enjoy contributing, and produce posts of high quality. If your community has these attributes, your member count will increase naturally as new visitors recognize it as a great place to be.

As a webmaster, it's important to set your own goals instead of trying to measure your success against other forums. For instance, your goal might be to create a friendly community with minimal conflict, or to have most member posts be at least 250 words long. Whatever your goals are, they shouldn't be solely focused on membership numbers.

The quality of posts and the number of posts each member makes are more important than member count. There's no point in having 50,000 members if only 200 of them contribute. In this case, the real member count is only 200, and you're misleading visitors if you tell them otherwise. Instead, you should focus on creating an engaging community where members are passionate about the forum's topic and contribute regularly.

So, if you're feeling discouraged about a low member count, remember that it's just a statistic that doesn't really matter. Focus on building a high-quality community that's attractive to visitors, and your member count will naturally increase over time.

How do you feel about statistics? Are they important to you ? Or would you rather have a handful active quality contributors over a 1000 members that makes low quality spam posts ?

 

[Ravenfreak]

I feel that your member count in the beginning matters, though later on it doesn't matter as much. As long as your members return to the forums to keep it alive, that's definitely what's more important as time goes on.

 

[joelr]

I wrote a guest article for IPS, Inc on this topic:

What Is The Engagement Trap (And What To Do About It)?

The engagement trap is a race to community activity for the sake of activity. It's usually measured by simple aggregate numbers like the total number of posts, topics, likes, or members. You don't want members to chat. You want members to learn, to advocate, to innovate, to educate, to support, t...

invisioncommunity.com

It challenges forum webmasters and community strategists to think beyond the most superficial engagement numbers of new member count and post count. Not all posts matter. Not all members matter. You will have member who provide more thought leadership, more expertise, and more in-depth discussion than others.