Ok so i have a good forum going in my targeted niche. I want to hear from the pro's, can it be big? like to the point where i could down the road quit my dayjob?

I know it doesn't happen overnight, this site is my baby and it will continue to grow and i will continue to give it my full attention. I am just wondering do you think , in it's niche and the size of the users in the niche, if it could be a real profitable site in the future.

It is TalkDelaware. So anyone from Delaware is in my niche. The population is around 900k people. Of course thats a total and is no where near how many people are online in DE...lol I also ge a decent amount of users from PA, MD and NJ.

Whaddya guys think? Will it do well in the long run or is the niche to watered down?

give it to me straight! and i would love for any advice on monetization specifically for my site if you have it.

Well - if Delaware (the city) is large enough and people find out about your community, then sure.

It all depends mate - how big is it? Are you the only community in your niche so far or what?

Well Delaware is a State in the USA, like New York or Florida. It is small but not the smallest. I am the only real community online in Delaware so yes i have the niche cornered. I opened in February this year, here are the stats.

Active Members: 128 (25%)
Threads: 2,719, This Month: 148 up (110%)
Posts: 37,509, This Month: 1550 up (87%)
Members: 512, This Month: 27 up (2%)

Originally Posted by Chase

Well Delaware is a State in the USA, like New York or Florida.

The clapping sound you heard right there was every person on the forum doing a well deserved facepalm.

*SLAP!*

I pointed that out for people who may be from the UK et al.... I don't know the provinces of say Australia so i dont expect them to know the states....

Don't make me come over the bridge to NJ Rob!!

anyone else? whaddya think? how much could you be making now on it?

stats
google analytics
14,107 visits
161,298 page views
7,801 visitors (i guess thats uniques right)


let me hear it, please

Throw me a frickin bone here....lol

Local advertising revenue potential scales with forum size and activity. You could potentially get Delaware-based businesses to advertise which pay more than a generic website that wants a banner displayed. Your forum isn't big enough to harbor any real sums of money though, but that takes time. Try to find advertisers today. That's the hard part. Once you get advertisers, you can increase rates as forum population increases.

How many uniques are you seeing per day?

Well in all honesty I don't know about quitting your day job on just the one site. But I could definitely see you earning enough to fund other projects so that you could eventually.

I ONLY say that because I don't know how profitable the "state forums" niche is. Now the guy that owns tamparacing.com is perceivably doing pretty darn well and that's just one city within one niche. So it's doable. But a general topic statewide forum is a whole other ballgame.

Thanks for the advice guys...

Mahz, I already offer local ads and have filled a few spot per month. 2 468x60's at the top at $40 each a month and 2 150x150's on the side for 30 each a month. I have no advertisers for this month though. O and i average i think 500 uniques a day, i believe that is what analytics is telling me...lol

George your right, and thats what i plan to do is get this site doing well and add more. I have talkpa.net right now going as well with a guy i know from PA running it. PA is considerably bigger then DE so i figure in time it will make more money, we will see.

Then after those 2 get on their feet i plan to start a few more forums for things im interested in like engineering and so on.

to tell you the truth they can be big but you are also limiting yourself to these cities basically . But hey I do not know much about these communities but in my eyes your target is only these cities.