Getting traction with a Questions and Answers niche site

To be clear, is your idea to crowdsource both the questions *and* answers around your niche? A la a targeted Quora (or even an offshoot of warrior forum itself), for your niche? There are a few approaches to getting really good answers, but imo that's a longer/more complex topic, so setting that aside for now to focus on questions. For that, I'd suggest sourcing from as many "actual" prospects / folks interested in the niche as possible (as opposed to inventing Q+As). Can do this by figuring out where these folks are, and then picking their brains via monitoring forums (sub-reddits, facebook groups, etc) as well as talking live with real people. If you're able, it might also be useful and helpful to conduct a Q+A with an expert in the niche, which you can transcribe or divide up into content for your site.

In addition, I've found the site AnswerThePublic to be an invaluable tool for understanding the kinds of (online) questions people ask around different topics ... suggest referencing that as well to start.

Hi Matthew, thanks for your reply.
Yes, the idea is a niche site similar to Quora.
I am considering contacting personally people in the niche (both experts and users) and invite them to start asking / answering.
Still wondering:
- How many people would it be necessary to invite at the beginning in order to get traction?
- How many questions /answers will make the site attractive to future new users? (Of course, quality content)
- Should I use an "invitation only" plugin and encourage guests to invite their own friends or just have the site open without promotion and let my targeted first users know about it?
Thanks again!

Interesting this one, it's a real chicken and egg situation.

I think what I would do would be to spend a great amount of time on social media, forums and Google looking up the exact questions that are getting asked.

If you are in MMO spend the day scrawling through WF posts and look for the common questions. Do this on Reddit, Quora etc and build a list of key questions. Keep a note on how many times a question is asked or the same question is asked but in a different way. Also look at how responsive the posts are and the quality of the answers.

Then with these key questions have a look at the amount of keyword searches there are for each question. Tools like Answer the public are good to get extra ideas for search terms but Google also will assist you with their other searches recommendation.

I think I would be tempted to seed some of these questions and answers. Not giving perfect answers to all the questions as you want to encourage engagement.

Now at the same time as doing this I would be active on social media. Follow the top 50 or 100 people in your niche and watch what they post.

Do the F/uF method and use there hashtags to target the people that they are targeting. I would probably run campaigns on Twitter and Instagram around can you help a poster out. Quadagon posted this today on yourwebsite.com What would you answer him.

Until you get a following or activity on your site I am not sure the benefit a name in your niche would get by helping you out. They would simply be posting to their followers/list.

How well known are you in that niche? Would poeple recognize your name and be willing to donate their time to be associated with you?


It's a serious question. Many of your ideas include other people doing you a favor and while people often say "I'd do it" the reality is most of them won't unless there is something in it for them or being associated with you carries some weight.


There are some interesting short articles on quora about how that site attracted users in the beginning and how it grew rapidly. Would probably be worth looking those up and giving them a quick read.

"Asking & answering myself with multiple factious accounts"

I started a Q&A site recently as an experiment and that's what I do...ask and answer my own questions. But I get the answers from factual sources.

Whatever you decide to do, if your answers are not good enough to inspire links, it's probably a waste of time.

Google will probably downgrade these types of sites in the near future. I think they have already to some extent.

On a side note, they can be profitable in certain ways, provided you can get traffic.

I started making one of these a few years ago. It's definitely a nice idea. Maybe you could check forums in your niche to see what people are talking about. It also helps if you're really familiar with the niche, or say you're making a house buying site and you're currently buying a house.


What I will also add is you must make it really easy to register and post questions. It's just too easy to post questions on Quora or Reddit so you need to be as easy to use as these sites are.