Need advice for my forum idea

Hi there.. I cant give you much assistance but here's my own opinion. If you do not have much knowledge but willing to learn. It is good for you but I am afraid the learning curve may be too steep and anyone how is more knowledge may gain an upper hand over you.

I understand the part on not wanting to wait till you become master. Then my question to you will be, what do you wish to gain from your forum or how does your forum aims to be different from others?

Since you are already familiar with niche sites, why not build it as a blog and then slowly expand to a forum. my 2 cents~

Cheers!

from the above data it doesn't seems good option for you.
instead use this money to build good blog or build app for mens fashion

Just because you like the idea and have an interest in it, doesn't mean there's enough of a target market for a forum. I'm guessing the percentage of men who want to discuss men's fashion is fairly small. In any country. That's not to say a relatively small niche can't be worthwhile - it can, if you know how to reach it, which requires good marketing skills.

If you think you're going to create a forum that's going to attract the men in your country who have no interest in fashion (which you say is most), that's a nice fantasy but you'll be wasting your time. Your audience will be those who already are, not those who aren't. Even then, you'll need some very good marketing skills to reach that small subset of men in your country. Don't assume "if I build it they will come".

Until you've got your first question answered satisfactorily, I wouldn't recommend worrying at all about questions 2 - 8.

I'd recommend starting with a men's fashion blog first, and seeing if you can attract enough readers to start a forum later on. It would be a good way to test the market. Invite comments and questions from your readers and see what kind of response you get. Once you've got some active readers, do a blog post asking them if they'd be interested in a discussion forum. But I wouldn't start with a forum. If you can't get readers to your fashion blog, you're not going to get people to join and participate in a fashion forum.

Hi Kellyimservices,

From what I've read from you... it sounds like jumping into that market with the forum module will require lots of work and dedication with no certainty of results.

How interested are you in style and fashion? Are you interested enough that if you invest $2500 and start developing the forum, adding content daily without any of your desired results in 4 months to carry on?

You've not provided much data but from what you've provided i'm not sure that the forum module would be your best starting point for this niche in your country.

You mentioned that there are niche sites on the topic in your country... do these sites have lots of activity, comments etc?

How will you monetize the forum?

You state that it appears that men don't pay much attention to style in your parts, do you think that you can connect with enough interested males to not only convert them to registered members but also to motivate them to participate regularly by asking questions and posting responses on the forum?

As far as moderators go you can check out fiverr.com and search for forum posters and moderators.

I've hosted communities on Arvixe without any problems. I've started with the basic plan and increased when necessary.

I'd use FB groups as a tool and offer more on my community. Sounds like instagram would be a very good network to get traffic from.

Forum management requires time, dedication and patience. You must keep filling the forum with interested content while simulating some activity in order to engage your new visitors.

Besides domain and hosting, I would suggest that you get forum posters that's familiar on the topic.

Honestly, I am not convinced that a forum is the best business module for you in this instance as you've not proved that in your post. I would start with a blog, a facebook page, twitter and instagram build a following and then launch the forum once i'm confident it could work

Thank you for all of your advices. Here's my thought:

1) A forum is what people in my country need. I don't assume based on my thought. I have been a member of some general forums (not fashion related at all, very far from that topic) but sometimes there's a thread asking where to buy this/that clothes/shoes, what should I wear, is it ok to wear this/that, where to buy cheap this/that...and the thread active for very long, sometimes nearly hundred pages. And I myself also need a place where I can learn and discuss about style but couldn't find a good one. I think this topic is really big and promising (style,fashion,clothes,shoes,glasses…).

2) With forum, I don’t need to be an expert; my job is getting traffic to the forum. I might hire other people with fashion knowledge to help me and I think I have some strategies that will work.

3) It seems that all of the sites are too general. They post about everything from sexy girls, films, fashion, workouts, health…like an online men magazine. Most of them are translated from western and english source is not getting much attention and very few to no comment. From my perspective, after I read an article provide some infos about fashion, what should I comment? Nothing to discuss there, get the info and then leave the site. But with forum, for ex a thread: someone in a hurry of buying new clothes for his dating might ask where to buy cheap/good clothes/shoes, what should I wear for the date, how do I look in this clothes… there will be many different ideas and advices. So the main reason I choose a forum for style and fashion over a blog because we often discuss and asking question. I also enjoy reading advice from there more than reading a translated dry article.

4) From what I have researched, my target members don’t have much knowledge about style and fashion and they also don’t have much interested in learning deeply. What they need is a friendly community where they can chat, asking some general questions, show up what they have bought, post some funny picture about clothes, discuss about some brand and promotion…So I won’t focus much on creating deep content about fashion and style, instead, I will create many discussion, question and answer threads and will follow this trend until building up a quite active community then when I see people are ready to learn more then I will then add more deep content.

5) Money will come later from advertisement and maybe a market section

6) My biggest enemy is fb groups. But with a forum threads won’t lost and we can do more things than just asking quick questions.

7) I won’t just build the forum and hope people will find it via search. I will get them from other forums, fb groups…

Any thought?

1) Do you think fashion and style for men is a good forum niche? It seems that in my country, men don't pay much attention about style so it has its own advantages and disadvantages. There will be fewer competitors and more chances but also less active community.

A> hmm... It's quite true that forum for men is niche market and this is good opportunity. It is like gambling. If your forums success and famous, then you will receive many advertisement. If it is not working, then you just throw the budget you specify above. My opinion, you can try it... Good luck

2) How to find the moderators and how to manage them. Do I need to pay money to hire them each month?
A> Yeap... Of course you need to find moderators to maintain your forum. If not, they will be a lot of spammers.

3) What host should I use for a forum? I don't think there will be many members at the beginning.
A> I would recommend you to use asphostportal. They have many good cms for forums. And the price is also affordable. If you based in Europe, then you can also visit hostforlife.eu.

4) There are many fb groups now. Their advantage is people can discuss and upload images very quickly. Can I attract people join the forum and active there instead of the groups. I think my biggest competitors are fb groups.
A> That's one of marketing strategy. You can attract via social media

5)How long to get used to the forum management? Does it require much time and effort? I will consider between doing it by myself or hire someone to do it.
A> Of course yes

6) What should I spend besides the domain and hosting? How could I reduce the cost?
A> As I said above, you can start from shared hosting first. Don't ever go with free hosting. Just find cheap but reliable hosting. If your site has attracted many visitors, then you can go with VPS or dedicated hosting.

7) What source should I use to build forum? Is it easy to apply theme and plugin as wordpress?
A> Hmm... Joomla is good for forums

8)What are other unexpected things that you admins have faced while manage a forum?
A> I don't know because I never experience in maintaing forums.

Hey man, if you can invest $2,500 then I'd strongly advice you to settle with any pre-coded theme from themeforest and spending biggest chunk of your money on paid traffic, you would do just fone

I would almost just start a Facebook group first to see if other people are interested in the idea. That way you can get started today with little investment. Once you start building a community and if it takes off then I'd create your own site with a blog. Then once you have an active community of hundreds or even thousands, then I'd start your own forum to run alongside the blog. Which will give you more control, branding power, and allow your forum to rank better on Google

Since you don't have a list or community right now, I'd start small and then scale up...

As some others have mentioned. I'm not sure if there would be many guys who would really discuss fashion either. Out of my group of friends, only a couple kinda care about fashion but would probably never go as far as to join a fashion forum.

Maybe a forum for gay guys to discuss fashion? Because I know some gay guys who love fashion, so maybe something like that would work better? haha, just an idea