Thanks, everyone for the encouragement and inspiration!
@Ravenfreak: I think I've heard of that anime forum before, I'll try and check it out. Social media would be a good place to advertise, where allowed, but I bet a lot of subreddits and groups are strict about advertising. That'd be awesome if you signup, by the way!
@Reverie: Yeah, those "what ifs" could take hold of you and make you wonder why you didn't pursue such a project when you have a passion and drive for such a thing.
We'll have a disputes forum for scammers and bad traders, I'll keep a list of the addresses of scammers too to help prevent them from coming back after they're banned. It's a thing you're definitely going to run into in a marketplace, but I hope to have some firm rules in place and let members know they need to file mail fraud against scammers. I'll have a feedback system for the most part that will allow people to leave feedback just like on eBay.
@kolakube: I think a lot of teens are still attracted to the game. I haven't been to one in a long time, but when I did go to tournaments it seemed it was mostly teens and younger twenties participating. I've never created a blog before, I don't think, and a blog would be an odder place to set up a marketplace I think, since a blog is mostly meant for articles in this aspect.
@Cedric: Yeah, if people my age are still interested in Yu-Gi-Oh like I am perhaps I could attract a more older/mature audience and people that were in the forum generation when it was booming.
I want the board to purely be Yu-Gi-Oh-related right now, but if there are a lot of people that suggest it or we need to expand to gain some traction, I may consider adding additional TCGs to the forum. The reason I want it to be geared towards Yu-Gi-Oh is that that is what I'm most familiar with and to have an all-out marketplace would pretty much be more suited for people that are at least familiar with the games and know more about them. Plus, I want to start small, and having Yu-Gi-Oh sections only would help me start out with a smaller audience.
No funds should be involved unless I wanted to start paying for advertising, which I don't see happening anytime soon.
@joelr: I've been a member of Pojo and Reddit for a while now, so I'm pretty familiar with their setup. I've seen the other forums you mentioned, but I have never been a part of them. The fact that there are 388k members of the Yu-Gi-Oh subreddit tells me there's at least some interest in the game still, but I see the Pokemon subreddit has 4.4m members and the Magic the Gathering TCG subreddit has 649k members, so it goes to show there's not as much interest in Yu-Gi-Oh as there once was and some other TCG's are more popular. I don't mind a smaller audience on my board, but of course, I want there to be a daily activity that warrants the board to stay online.
When you speak of market research, what did you exactly have in mind? Just finding the right audience and figuring out a strategy to bring them in?
@prophet: You make some good points there. I've always mostly used eBay and TCGPlayer to buy and sell Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I've actually been selling some of my unneeded and duplicate cards lately on eBay. It'll be hard to find an audience that is lured to my forum over those sites, but perhaps I can think of some type of unique strategy to lure them in. You're totally right about most content regarding the game being found on Facebook and Reddit, which is why it would be hard to lure people into the forum atmosphere besides those that prefer it. Hopefully, I can think of some unique ideas to toss around to create something different that will lure some members in.
