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Raymond Hackney poses the question of whether forums are dead or not on his blog (which if you think about it, is nothing more than owner-posted threads with owner-approved replies on a forum) after the question came up as to whether forums are dead when Epik announced DNForum ownership.
He makes some good points, gathered from, well, forums.
I would beg to differ because there is this little, I mean, huge, company called VerticalScope. They operate around 1500 communities on some of the greatest exact match domains for forums.
The licensing of the forum software to get to VerticalScope's level is estimated to be anywhere around $150,000 to $300,000 due to moving from one commercial platform to another. However, I think they got a break when Xenforo sprung up and they got a great licensing deal that isn't offered anymore -- I know, as I tried to obtain this as I want to compete with them, but the barrier to entry (a single license as opposed to an unlimited one) makes it exceedingly harder to do as each forum is another hundred to drop.
Why would I continue to operate forums and monetize domains that seemingly fit into a category that could be a community? Because it's profitable.
Unlike a blog, a forum has "user-generated content" (UGC). In most cases, this is now deemed as low-quality content by search engines. In others, it's not. You can have a thread that gets thousands of visitors a year for no apparent reason and cash in on CPC ads with that.
So are forums dead? Short answer: No. Long answer: Only if the operators of the communities don't continue to encourage users to participate, which they must determine which way is appropriate for that to happen in that particular community.
If you have the time, monetize your domains with a forum and you may never need a sale! And if a sale comes, it's probably VerticalScope knocking on your door.
He makes some good points, gathered from, well, forums.
I would beg to differ because there is this little, I mean, huge, company called VerticalScope. They operate around 1500 communities on some of the greatest exact match domains for forums.
The licensing of the forum software to get to VerticalScope's level is estimated to be anywhere around $150,000 to $300,000 due to moving from one commercial platform to another. However, I think they got a break when Xenforo sprung up and they got a great licensing deal that isn't offered anymore -- I know, as I tried to obtain this as I want to compete with them, but the barrier to entry (a single license as opposed to an unlimited one) makes it exceedingly harder to do as each forum is another hundred to drop.
Why would I continue to operate forums and monetize domains that seemingly fit into a category that could be a community? Because it's profitable.
Unlike a blog, a forum has "user-generated content" (UGC). In most cases, this is now deemed as low-quality content by search engines. In others, it's not. You can have a thread that gets thousands of visitors a year for no apparent reason and cash in on CPC ads with that.
So are forums dead? Short answer: No. Long answer: Only if the operators of the communities don't continue to encourage users to participate, which they must determine which way is appropriate for that to happen in that particular community.
If you have the time, monetize your domains with a forum and you may never need a sale! And if a sale comes, it's probably VerticalScope knocking on your door.