Tue Aug 10, 2004 7:23 pm   Reply with quote      

What are you up against with these health forums?

By that, I mean, are there many other popular healthcare-based forums out there? Like your education forums... I recall there were a couple of others that did well... is this true also for this niche?

Aaron

Tue Aug 10, 2004 11:47 pm   Reply with quote      

I'm sure that there are many many healthcare forums. However, one thing I started noticing is that there are less forums in areas like education and healthcare while there are gazillion forums related to programming, web development, and web design. I also notice that many of forums related to programming, web development, and web design are pretty well maintained, most of education and healthcare forums are not maintained at all. We'll see how this forum grows.

I'll reference active healthcare forums if I find.

Wed Aug 11, 2004 7:19 am   Reply with quote      

I think you're right to find a niche other than web design/programming, etc. There's so much competition in that field that it's probably difficult to become one of the leading forums on those subjects. The same probably isn't true for education and health.

Aaron

Wed Aug 11, 2004 11:17 am   Reply with quote      

Many of those who run those forums are pretty smart; I wonder why they don't pick education, healthcare, finance or some other subject. They may not be experts in those subjects, but there are things they can pick up.

Wed Aug 11, 2004 12:36 pm   Reply with quote      

A few do (John Scott for example has a contruction-based forum, and a motorcycle one)... but yeah, you make a good point. Maybe they don't have interests outside computing?

Aaron

Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:05 pm   Reply with quote      

Most health-related forums seem to be specific, such as Alzheimer's, dystonia, arthritis etc etc...it seems to me, anyway. People will 'google' their illness & look for a forum perhaps that deals with their problem.

I have a forum of my own, but it's small (100 members) & I'm not really interested in attracting all the riff raff we're a bit like a little community really.

If you want to see a really, really thriving complementary health forum with a huge membership, try this:

http://www.healthypages.net/forum/

I used to be a member (well, I still am) but post very little now, as it has attracted so many new young members that ask the same questions & say the same things over & over again, that I tend to find it a bit boring. I need to learn new things.

Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:38 pm   Reply with quote      

12712 Registered users have made 92200 posts in 99 forums. There are currently 11042 topics.

Wow.

How do these forums manage this kind of level of participation. What are the rest of us missing?

Aaron

Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:21 pm   Reply with quote      

Member participation is one of the hooks! You'll notice that each category has at least one 'moderator' - it makes peeps feel important

It also has a lot of other related stuff important to those who are therapists - for instance, workshop listings, practitioners' directory, auction (similar to ebay)...

When I first joined it, it was all free but now you have to pay £20 per year to be able to be included in listings! But with 12712 members....that's a fair bit of dosh, even if only half of them pay it!!
It has very high search engine ranking!
People help each other a lot.
Members are always very pleasant to each other & NEVER rude!
But it took 3/4 years to build it up to this

Wed Aug 11, 2004 10:19 pm   Reply with quote      

Maybe there's hope for the rest of us yet. At what point would you say it really took off?

I guess that's impossible to answer, but was it pretty active even after just one year?

Aaron

Wed Aug 11, 2004 10:56 pm   Reply with quote      

This one? Doesn't look too small too me. In fact, it seems like a pretty active and well maintained forum.