When is it enough to give up?

[Cedric]

Have you ever been in a situation where you feel fed up and discouraged because your community isn't growing as you hoped, despite investing a lot of time and effort into building it? How do you regain your motivation and not give up on it?

 

[Cory]

Kind of, but I wouldn't say I gave up out of hopelessness, but just greater things to pursue. I created a Yu-Gi-Oh TCG board when I was also running my resource board. I left the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG board up for about a month and no one ever registered, so I turned the board offline and kept focusing on my resource board.

 

[Strawberry]

I've never been in this particular situation, but I imagine you should evaluate what could potentially be causing that block of people not registering or posting. I can imagine it would be frustrating, but if you truly are dedicated and recognise your efforts, you wouldn't give up at the first hurdle, and you should be able to reflect and come up with a new plan. It may also be an idea to bring another experienced person onto your team as an Administrator or Community Manager as they may be able to bring some fresh ideas.

 

[Shortie]

Being in a situation where you feel like your site isn't going where you wanted it to is always the worst situation to be in. I would never say to take the loss there though and give up at all. There are always ways you can pull it back you just need to sometimes take a back seat, take a breather and think about what you could do to help you pull the forum back. As long as you still have that fight in you, you can be sure that you will find a way to pull it back.

 

[Kale]

Yep, I have a few times before! Being in that situation sucks, trust me. I have tried stuff such as asking how we could improve, why people didn't post as much, etc. In the end I just decided to close most of my forums due to low activity. I'd also say I never gave up due to hopelessness.

I created a Yu-Gi-Oh TCG board when I was also running my resource board. I left the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG board up for about a month and no one ever registered, so I turned the board offline and kept focusing on my resource board.

Yep, probably the best thing to do honestly. If no one signed up after a month I'd likely just stick with your most successful forum/site.

 

[Cory]

Yep, probably the best thing to do honestly. If no one signed up after a month I'd likely just stick with your most successful forum/site.

I wasn't too invested in it. I didn't do too much advertising, so that's obviously one of the reasons no one joined.

 

[Niko]

I'm too stubborn to give up..
and when I do it only lasts an hour ahha

 

[Arantor]

I'm the patron saint of holding onto things years after I should have let them go.

 

[Ken]

Have you ever been in a situation where you feel fed up and discouraged because your community isn't growing as you hoped, despite investing a lot of time and effort into building it? How do you regain your motivation and not give up on it?

Well, I never give up. I'm not someone who shuts their forums down without giving a proper reason.

 

[Tracy]

I've started several sites... and then got discouraged when they didn't gain traction and brought them down. My current site won't be the same... as it's honestly a "hobby" that I've been interested in for over 40 years... and finally have been able to get involved in and being able to participate in with a somewhat knowledgeable stance.
My site is more for ME to post than anyone else... if others want to join and participate then I'm MORE than happy for them to join... but it's mainly a venue for my expression of joy of my hobby.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

It took me a while to find my calling this recent comeback.

I had missed AAF so much that I ultimately decided on making a new admin forum. That turned out to be what I wanted to do.

But at first, I was going through my hobbies and interests to point to where I was getting burned out again. I didn't want to do that. Finally got a forum going that I'm excited to grow.

Sometimes it take a little while.

 

[Heatman]

This happened to a friend of mine whom I helped with running his gaming forum some years ago. He tried literally everything but it was very difficult for the community to grow but we were getting tons of spammers joining the forum everyday to spam it with sex drugs etc. He ended up having to take it offline. He recently brought it back online but there's no activity on the forum.

 

[Reverie]

This is one of the hardest things for me. I would put a LOT into forums, and I think I would get burnt out, along with things just not going the way I want them to, such as drama. A "Reset" could always help. Refresh the community. Give yourself a break (2-3 days), and then hit it all again harder and better than before.