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Managing A Community
By Max | August 12, 2007
I have recently been spending way too much time bending to the whims of the communities which are built up around one or two of my sites. Due to the subject matter of the sites I run (two video games, one ipod), a lot of the traffic is from young males. These types of users I have found are very immature and are just developing their egos. Actually most of my users are great. They contribute and generally leave me alone while enjoying the site. Unfortunately, it only takes one or two tough cases to really become a time sink.
I generally like to be available for the users. When they see me putting time into a site, it encourages them to contribute as well. However, as you would expect for many of them, this is their primary hobby. What may not seem intrusive at all from their point of view, when added up from multiple users across multiple sites, becomes a considerable amount of hand holding.
I don’t really know the best solution to this problem. On one forum, which doesn’t produce much revenue I am trying to distance myself from the daily running of the site. I have delegated admin tasks to a former moderator. It has already caused some controversy after he banned a couple regular users. Since the forum doesn’t produce much revenue, it doesn’t matter too much, but I also don’t want to jeopardize future growth.
I would appreciate any advice on overcoming this problem.
Also it should be noted that I even with these time commitments, I am still not working full time on these websites. Just know that when you do finally purchase a site for yourself, you can expect that the income is not totally passive.
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August 12th, 2007 at 7:01 am
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August 12th, 2007 at 10:41 am
It is amazing how much work this actually is. It is pretty easy to get the first site up with tome advertising on it. But as things grow the knocks on the door increase.
I am talking to a guy that likes to code but hates everthing else. I am trying to work out a deal where I will be the ‘liason’ so to speak for his user base and in exchange he will code for me.
I had another site idea in a niche I know nothing about. I found a guy that is very knowledgeable in the area but has little computer skills. Hopefully I can work out a deal with him to produce content while I handl the admin and marketing.
As for your deal forums are tough. Egos can get in the way for moderators and users. I read somewhere an article on knowing when to sell. One of the aspects of that decision was time constraints and the personal resource strain from the site. If they started to outweigh the monetary satisfaction then sell. If I can find that article again I’ll forward it to you.
August 12th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Online communities take a lot of work to develop and run smoothly.
It seems to me that you want things to be run a certain way but your moderators are not fulfilling their roles as you would like or expect.
You really need to ensure you choose moderators who are the right people for the task - having no moderator is better than having a bad one.
You may want to check out my blog - it has been going for around six months now and offers many articles containing help and advice for running a successful online community.
Also, feel free to contact me for any personalised advice - I will be more than happy to share my opinions on any aspect of community building.
- Martin Reed
August 12th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Hey Max,
It may be time to sell off one of you forums and start on the next site, when something starts to become a strain it no longer is enjoyable and becomes a chore. Don’t let something you’re in control of control your time. Just a thought…
August 13th, 2007 at 1:15 am
Thanks for the advice. My general plan when I buy a site, is to improve it in some way like optimizing revenues, and then sell it sometime later to realize the profit. Right now I am letting the counterstrike earnings soak in and build up some history before I sell that one. Then I will move on to the next one. I can really only focus on doing this for one site at a time. I let the others just earn off their current traffic. Maybe my plan should be for faster flips in the future, but you can’t help when the good deals come along and sometimes you just have to buy.