Community Model Worth The Effort?

I'm wondering if I should continue my efforts to build online communities???

I have forums, blogs, profile pages, etc... on my travel, business, health, political, and financial sites.

My short term results are not good:
* Poor ad performance
* Poor affiliate click and conversion rates
* Not many people participating
* Very difficult to get consistent traffic

Hopefully my long-term results will improve?
* Getting better rankings in search engines
* I and a few members are creating consistent content
* New traffic sources have been found
* I'm focusing on my communities where people are researching a purchase or are likely to make a purchase.

It certainly is a shot in the arm to see that abestweb was bought and hopefully Haiko got a nice pay day.

I'm wondering if it is worth the time and effort to continue building these communties? I knew going in that it would be hard to get traction and find active members, but I was hoping for better results from my efforts.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/suggestions you could share.

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eBranchOffice.com

I've tried it all and the only thing I've ever made money with is datafeed product sites. They make me money every month without fail.

I use Expression Web 3 to build them. http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Exp...56494769&sr=8-2

It works great.

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All Politicians should be limited to only two terms. The first term in office - and the second term in Prison for all of their corruption during their first term. "In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress." — John Adams.

Iv had nothing but headaches with online communities, like you say the ads are so bad performers that its hardly worth the effort. The problem is that your users are the same users over and over and they become completely blind to the ads. Try changing the ad positions all the time, worked for me.

Thanks for your comments.

I'm building some sales sites. Trying to figure out if I should pull the plug on some of my communities or keep them active. I will probably keep them online since they don't cost much and a few are barely profitable, but my effort will go much more into the sales sites.

Anyone else have thoughts on the effectiveness of building online communities?

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eBranchOffice.com

What about a mixed community/sales site or using your community site as backlinks to a separate related sales site?

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My art and photo galleries.

I like the BodyBuilding.com community model where they collect a lot of body builders as members and then have a store where they sell supplements and other stuff for that market.

I would like to do something like that with a health & wellness community, but the hard part is getting the community going and getting a lot of loyal members.

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eBranchOffice.com

Initially you may need to do PPC (if you can afford) to attract visitors and build community?

> "...the hard part is getting the community going and getting a lot of loyal members." <

I've been involved in online communities since 1982 and the problem has always been the same: getting a 'critical mass' of active participants to create a real sense of community (including actively participating in posting useful content AND responding helpfully to other posts). It requires a substantial investment of time and effort, not just by the "owners" but by a diverse group of generous volunteers (with a wide range of motives) who can help nurture the community. A community can't be built with "seeded" content and "virtual conversations" posted by paid staffers, nor even by a dedicated group of volunteers "acting in concert." A successful community also requires careful planning (rules and active moderation) to deal with "interlopers" (newbies, spammers, and worse), and to create the right balance so that loyal members continue to participate while keeping the community open to new participants.

In my experience, no successful community was ever created by someone who focused just on "making money." Arguably, many (perhaps most) of the most successful online communities were started without any real expectation of financial profit. And those few "communities" that seem to become "quick successes" almost always end up being shooting stars whose life ends quickly. And sadly, even a successful, thriving community can be destroyed quickly by poor management decisions (or even by a "benevolent" change of ownership).

Finally, while I agree that PPC can attract useful traffic for many affiliate endeavors, and can be effective for drawing new participants into an active, thriving community, PPC is not a good way to attract active participants for most online communities during their "birth" or early stages.

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Mark J. Welch, Internet Marketing Consultant & Web Publisher
Blog; My Datafeed Experience; Free Affiliate-Program Advice for Merchants

Community minded sites are bear to build ...

Loyalty is hard to come by with so many options available on the www.

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ToxicMoldUSA.com & StartRemodeling.com - We're Bettering YOUR Life by Improving Where YOU Live It! - - Twitter

Thanks for your additional comments.

PPC is good for direct offers with measurable ROI, but not so good for brining people in to look at a new online community. I tested it and could get people to sign-up, but few came back or ever participated. You can burn through a marketing budget pretty quickly and I'm glad it was a small test for me.

I get traffic now through various free methods (other than my time and effort) and I still find that some people sign up, but most people just look around and then leave.

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eBranchOffice.com