Starting a specific type of forum? website?

[SMKR]

So I have found a niche in the industry I work (buy/sell businesses-see target market corporate refugees and existing business owners looking to diversify/expand) in that I think has a need and there isn’t anything out there forum wise on the internet currently. Where can I research or where does one go to look into creating a forum? I’d like to create a forum for folks to come to much like this that are interested and also have a mirror site or sister site that they can request more information on if they want to. My issue is, where do I begin? Any input is appreciated.

[Tremor14]

i start all my internet searches here:

https://www.google.com

[SMKR]

Thanks Tremor, didnt know that.

[BLAKE]

Without diving into research, my gut tells me that this has to exist in some way. Likely in LinkedIn user groups. Building a forum is pretty simple. Your bigger challenge is going to be marketing it to build a community.

[BlackGT]

i start all my internet searches here:

yellowbullet.com

Fixed that for you...

[Tremor14]

bullet*

[lincolnboy]

Pintrest

[jefehbk]

Just tell people to come here for their questions. This place is better than Google.

[Gasser64]

subd. What would you name the forum?

[lincolnboy]

What about a chat room

[Denny]

Without diving into research, my gut tells me that this has to exist in some way. Likely in LinkedIn user groups. Building a forum is pretty simple. Your bigger challenge is going to be marketing it to build a community.

Right. I bet Alan might have some insight into it. Shoot AL P a message.

[War Machine]

What about a chat room

brilliant!!! why dont we have a chatroom???

[MustangPoser]

I used to build a lot of spam websites my senior year/into my early 20's and owned several community websites. Now, you can't really get by doing that. Forums are so hard to grow now. You really need to do something unique in your industry if you want a community to develop. Even when I got started traditional forums were kind of dated.

I didn't really understand what your niche is, it sounds like your looking for people who recently exited industries who are looking to buy businesses, and connecting business owners with their target buyers (corporate refugees looking to start their own business)?

Regardless, you need to provide some tools that benefit your target audience that they can't find elsewhere. Whether it be the ability to list their business and you provide a toolset that uses linkedin's API to find potential buyers and then connect them with the listing, or tools for getting their business ready for sale.

If you develop a way to make finding businesses easier that match a buyers criteria, or make connecting business owners to potential buyers easier than you can build a community around that, and earn more from your tools than your community. Just developing a community online now doesn't work. There is facebook, linkedin, reddit. Those are community platforms with millions of niche communities.

If you really want a community for your niche, it's not going to grow unless it's growing around something. Internet users are like bass. They are only found where there is good structure. No structure, no bass.

[Raskal]

Slapping the bass man