The pros and cons for starting a forum in a specialized niche

Would you like to start a forum about gaming? Is this a broad niche? Yes, it it. Should you start a forum about World of Warcraft. Or Oblivion? Travian anyone? Same with other niches. Do we go for the broad niche of webmaster work or do we focus on blogs only. Or running a directory? Maybe a forum for Wordpress users?

The pros for a narrow well specialized niche

1. easier SEO work - can you rank well for 'gaming forum'? Don't know. If it's a very competitive keyword and some huge forums already rank well with it, your chances are not that big. Can you rank easier for 'Oblivion forums'? Well, I'd say yes. Less competition and less forums in the end, since most would go for something 'wide' such as general gaming.

2. easier to establish yourself as an authority - let's say I'd have a blog that deals with everything related to medicine. Hmm, not easy to establish myself, since I'd have to learn about each and every specialty. But I do have www.orthodontics-today.com. I'm an orthodontics patient, have read many books and articles, and asked my ortho hundreds of questions. Is it easier for me to present some information in this? It surely is.

3. less competition - just as mentioned before, a very narrow niche is easier to establish yourself in, since your competition is not as 'scary' as for a broad one. Of course there might already be some big 'players', but less than if you took on a more general topic.

4. easier to attract people who love that niche - an Oblivion forum would get all people who love the game. Some might actually not bother join a regular gaming forum, since the information they are interested in is 'diluted' in millions of other topics about all kinds of games they don't really care about. But if they want some Oblivion support or would hang out with other Bethesda games fans, your community is the one to be in.

The cons for a narrow well specialized niche

1. more difficult to kick start your community - let's say you need some initial 'blood' in your forums. You need people to register and provide information. It's easier to find people who are passionate about gaming in general than people who play 'zombie' games (I see this is a new trending niche for many forums). Take me for an example: I can help you with a general gaming forum, but it's almost impossible to post in a WOW forum since I haven't played the thing.

2. you'd expect a smaller traffic for this niche - if you'd get past that huge Goliath forum you're in competition with on your broad niche, you actually have access to a BIGGER potential trafic. Of course potential and real are not the same, so it really depends on how you play your cards.

3. sometimes your niche might be too narrow - I tried adding a forum to my orthodontics blog and unfortunately it didn't really work. Well, it's true I wasn't willing to put in the extra effort, but anyway. Let's say I'd go even more specialized: a forum for people who have Damon Braces. So, I exclude all people who wear other types of braces and my niche would be maybe too narrow at this time.

So, what should we do?

I do believe that a general niche is good if you have the time / money / talent for this. Establishing new forums IS NOT EASY, so you'll have quite some work to do. Getting into a general overly-competitive niche would require some serious effort.

If you can get into a smaller sub-niche, maybe your chances are better. Not to mention we all love an excellent specialized forum, where our specific needs are met. Just make sure you're not choosing your niche too small and narrow, since this might then hinder your growth.

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