Hi all,

 

I was wondering if the community had any advice for me. I'm currently leading a small but active gaming community, called Quantum Gaming. We have a website with forums set up, as well as a TeamSpeak server. Trouble is, we're not getting the volume of members we'd like to have.

 

So I thought you guys could give me some advice. What do you think would be the next step?

 

To staff: I don't think this classifies as advertising, I'm simply asking for some advice.

Well nobody will join or post in a community that has no or little activity.

 

One of the ways of dealing with this that the large website Reddit used, was to create fake accounts and the admins posted on these randomly until they didn't need to.

Apparantly that made Reddit what it is today, as people kept joining as it looked very active. That, and a quite powerful advertising campaign.

Another way is to have something exclusive that people really want that is not available anywhere else. For LCPDFR.com, that's the LCPDFR mod.

I guess the final way is to have a good advertising campaign or make sure all your friends spread it and pass it on.

 

Hope this helps a little bit.

Well nobody will join or post in a community that has no or little activity.

 

One of the ways of dealing with this that the large website Reddit used, was to create fake accounts and the admins posted on these randomly until they didn't need to.

Apparantly that made Reddit what it is today, as people kept joining as it looked very active. That, and a quite powerful advertising campaign.

Another way is to have something exclusive that people really want that is not available anywhere else. For LCPDFR.com, that's the LCPDFR mod.

I guess the final way is to have a good advertising campaign or make sure all your friends spread it and pass it on.

 

Hope this helps a little bit.

 

Yeah, thanks for the response Jay.

 

I guess one way to advertise would be through YouTube. Any other ideas?

Also you are going to have to spend money, no one will want to be on a website that has a name like "arma2dayz.enjinlifetoday.com

 

Another thing is have a fair set of rules, and stay true to your own rules once the word is out that admins abuse their own rules you will just go down hill. (cough cough Island life cough cough)

 

With the mod that i'm an admin at we have our own server box that runs servers for dayz, and a few other games. If you just make a community  that relays on other peoples servers its not going to work well.

 

Youtube would work ok but getting your video out there and getting views is the hard thing, your best bet is to just make your site look active, every now and then advertise on a website that allows it (may need to pay.) Getting a nice community that runs well won't happen with out spending money.

 

I have owned 3 different community's, USNF (United States Naval Force arma 2 community had well over 100 active players (disbanded)) ) Minecraft (DigitalGamingUSA had about 75-100 active players ((Disbanded) and my DigitalGamingUSA.com community this one actually closed down because of failure admins weren't active and I just couldnt bother dealing with all the bull shit.

 

This isn't something that happens overnight it takes weeks if not months for it to finally play out. Its best to start with just one game then move on to others, (gta 4 would not be a good one because of the amount of crashes that happen people will just give up and never come back)

Edited January 3, 201412 yr by Darkangel

-snip-

 

1) No, we use a .tk domain which is free (our site is idontwanttoadvertisemylink.tk)

 

2) We've set up a list of rules, and we stick to them

 

3) We run our own servers, either via Hamachi or Direct IP (port forwarded) when one of the moderators is online (my router doesn't support port forwarding)

 

4) That's a good idea

 

5) We started as a GTA IV clan over a year ago, then we found ourselves playing less and less of it, hence why we moved.

 

Thanks for your help, I really appreicate the responses guys!

 

Edited January 3, 201412 yr by FirstResponder

You have to find the right niche, and you have to offer something that other websites don't.  When you make a gaming community, you are essentially entering a hugely overcrowded and saturated market if you like.  There's probably millions of them out there, and you'll find yourself being literally one in a million.

 

I would say that you can't simply start with the finished product (a large, active, wide ranging gaming forum), but rather you have to start with something much more concentrated and specific.  You can have fifty gaming sections covering everything from GTA to Battlefield to NFL to Sims games, but nothing's ever going to happen in them.  On the other hand, if you have a core userbase which is passionate and active about a few subjects, like people were about police stuff in GTA when this place started, that's a much better place to start.  If you have this concentrated activity, you have a better chance at attracting new members who are interested because there might not be another website out there which has the same level of activity about the subject they are interested in as you do.  Of course, this doesn't apply to games themselves GTA, don't make a GTA forum, there's hundreds, and all of them are dwarfed by GTANet.  You need to find something that works, something that people are interested in and more importantly, something that you are interested in.  You already have an active core by the looks of things, your focus should be to grow this, not expand it.  Save the expansion for later.  It's much easier to expand a large community than it is a small one.

 

Often you'll find that big communities started out as a small project, and you can look at things like multiplayer mods for games and such for evidence of this.  Take SA-MP for example, it has an active community that isn't focused entirely on SA-MP - it has modding, it has programming, it has gaming.  Then look at some of the more popular SA-MP servers like LS-RP.  It has another big community, and again it isn't focused 100% on the server - it too has modding (more so than SA-MP) and gaming.

 

And you need a .com domain.  You won't get taken seriously on the web without one.

Any free or nonstandard domain has automatic issues. .com is the most standard for generic stuff. Nonprofits do well with .org, and you might be fine for country-specific things with country-specific domains (e.g. .co.uk), but if you have a site which is not a nonprofit, and you want a worldwide audience, you want .com. The issue with less-standard stuff is precisely that it tends to be somewhat cheaper; that means spammers use it more often.

Any free or nonstandard domain has automatic issues. .com is the most standard for generic stuff. Nonprofits do well with .org, and you might be fine for country-specific things with country-specific domains (e.g. .co.uk), but if you have a site which is not a nonprofit, and you want a worldwide audience, you want .com. The issue with less-standard stuff is precisely that it tends to be somewhat cheaper; that means spammers use it more often.

 

I see your point, but I'd rather wait for a bit before investing in something like that.

-snip-

 

So maybe see what games we play now have the most appeal, then discard the ones that don't until we grow...? We have a few ideas that could make us stand out, so would that be the next move?

 

I also personally think that time is another factor in growth. Over time, if you do everything right, the growth rate will definitely increase, and hopefully people will start spreading it by word of mouth.

 

2 years ago, we were pretty much doing everything we are now, and we weren't growing nearly as fast as we are now. So for our site, and most other sites, the bigger it grows, the faster it grows. 

 

I don't think this is a fact, but more so of my personal opinion, based on what I've seen here and on other sites.

 

 

I also personally think that time is another factor in growth. Over time, if you do everything right, the growth rate will definitely increase, and hopefully people will start spreading it by word of mouth.

 

2 years ago, we were pretty much doing everything we are now, and we weren't growing nearly as fast as we are now. So for our site, and most other sites, the bigger it grows, the faster it grows. 

 

I don't think this is a fact, but more so of my personal opinion, based on what I've seen here and on other sites.

So I guess what you're saying is keep at it and you'll grow exponentially?

So I guess what you're saying is keep at it and you'll grow exponentially?

Pretty much. 

 

It'll eventually take off on its own.

Pretty much. 

 

It'll eventually take off on its own.

 

I hope so, thanks for all your advice guys - particularly from the staff

I've been in many clans/groups before, one successful, the others er... Not so much. The successful one had lots of staff that were always on their toes looking for something to improve and are always looking for bugs within the clan to fix. A level of seriousness within the administration is also usually required, however, don't go to the point where it's insane. We're here to have fun, it's not a job, we're not getting paid to play games and act as though we're the cops, because we're not. Overall, find a way to give them a good experience, come up with some cool ideas and it should kick off from there. If it doesn't, you're doing something wrong. If you put effort in anything you do, it should turn out great. 

I see your point, but I'd rather wait for a bit before investing in something like that.

 

 

A domain name can be purchased for around $10 on average. Sometimes you can get them for as low as a dollar. If you're not ready to invest resources into a big project, you aren't ready to run one.

 

 

2 years ago, we were pretty much doing everything we are now, and we weren't growing nearly as fast as we are now. 

 

1.) YouTube word of mouth.

2.) ???

3.) Profit.

Edited January 4, 201412 yr by unr3al