My friend is interested in making a website about love and relationships and has asked me to help her admin it since I know a bit more about it than her but her main goal on the website is to share and make people feel comfortable to share their feelings but, I have a couple problems with the idea and I don't want her to start spending money buying domain, hosting etc.
I'm not a pro by all means, I just design websites so I was wondering, how would one go about advertising this kind of site? I've never really advertised a love/relationship advice forum, it's always been web design or advertising myself so all I know is to go to admin forums. How else could me and her handle this?
Personally, I wouldn't go for it, without a perspective audience.
By this I mean that I could easily go over to Wrong Planet (And I'm a member there...) And post in their relationship section.
It seems a bit like a "General Forum", to me.
I think it is a decent idea myseldf. I have done it before but the project failed due to lack of time and also lack of money for starting that off. I do however own the domain relationshipboard.net which could be good for SEO if you want it then let me know
About advertising. I would say pretty much normal forum posting as well as some offline posters or something like that. Most people have some form of issues in a relationship so it would be easy to get members if you get things right.
There are a few of them in the niche though and I found it hard to get people to join up because I was relying on sign ups to ask questions for me to answer and discuss so as long as you could cover that and outdo the competition in design, management and content quality then I think you could do well.
I feel like pretty much any public forum about relationships is a bad idea and only encourages problems. Ethically, I wouldn't be involved with such a project.
That probably doesn't help you, though.
(2012-10-29, 03:12 PM)brad-t Wrote: [ -> ]I feel like pretty much any public forum about relationships is a bad idea and only encourages problems. Ethically, I wouldn't be involved with such a project.
That probably doesn't help you, though.
if i am not wrong, he isn't talking about a public relationship forum. He just wants to know how to administer a "WEBSITE" something like a social network about relationships and its not a bad idea. About advertising, it depends on the targeted audience (young, old, students, professionals) and the features of the site itself. You may sent out invitations through social networks mentioning the fatures, you may use forums and blogs for publicity etc.. Just normally what you do to advertise your forums or any other site. But your content quality and features counts!
The idea is solid in one sense. A lot of times you need to vent, I actually just finished. Sadly, places like reddit already have a large vast userbase and it's beyond easy to create a new account there in seconds to do so.
(2012-10-29, 03:42 AM)Ben Cousins Wrote: [ -> ]I mean that I could easily go over to Wrong Planet (And I'm a member there...) And post in their relationship section.
(2012-10-30, 01:39 AM)Lo. Wrote: [ -> ]Sadly, places like reddit already have a large vast userbase and it's beyond easy to create a new account there in seconds to do so.
My point exactly
I do agree witch such a thing - I'm for one not really open to do it but she's wanting to try it. As for the way you can sign up etc - I can be for sure that my design will be easy to follow so I don't have any problems in the UI side of things. It's a bit harder though, to take some stuff seriously on bigger forums sometimes since people there can be harmful, not saying it wouldn't happen on the forum she's planning on making but I can say it will be a bit more controlled.
Well based on many of my conversations with Mark over the years he'll probably be one of your first members
.
So you might have something on your hands.
On topic of her spending money and what not don't you have hosting that you could just let her use until she decides to stick with it or not? Then it's only $10 for the domain (or more if you're charging for your services
).
I do but I am short a bit this month to pay it so she might have to wait a while (it's 60 dollars every 6 months) otherwise I'd be happy to help her.