University Forum

[Squandered Halfpints]

I want to start a forum for my university. We have a student population of over 30,000. If I were able to get a couple hundred/thousand? regular users (members), do you think I could find some local businesses to advertise? How much can I expect to profit?

[rogercbryan]

Forums are one of the hardest things to get up and running... unless you can get a forum on the universities website I would look for other ventures....

[Squandered Halfpints]

For marketing it, I thought of a couple ways. 1) pass out/post flyers on campus describing how people can utilize it. 2) Ask the university to include a flyer (made specifically for freshman) inside the packet they hand out at orientation. 3) Market it free online to students via facebook/myspace/Linkedin, craigslist, blackboard, other forums. And I'm still brainstorming other potential ways.

The hardest part is getting people to particpate in the very beginning. Nobody is going to want to spend their time in a forum with no posts. What is the best way to start a forum. Can I "make up" posts to show examples of what people can expect. Or should I try and get all of my friends at the school to particpate? Any other suggestions? How do you think this forum got started? If I were to come here and see nothing posted, I probably would've never come back.

[Squandered Halfpints]

Forums are one of the hardest things to get up and running... unless you can get a forum on the universities website I would look for other ventures....

Is this the general consensus. It will be hard to start so I should give up. I really want to make this work. And its not only about profit. I believe every student will be able to utilize the forum. I really want to make it work. These are a couple of things I want to incorporate in the site:

-Finding roomates/friends (for both the incoming freshman and existing roomates).
-Major discussion (homework/project help, info/reccomendations for classes/professors)
-Nightlife Forum (upcoming parties/events, party buses, bar reccomendations)
-Carpooling (to school, on surf/ski & snowboard trips)
-Sports (putting together pick-up games -basketball,baseball,football; and maybe just a general discussion on schools athletics)
-Greek Forum (????????)

These are just a some of the things I thought of. Deviding them into forum catagories and naming each forum is something I have to put more thought into. But I think this would be really fun to try and create.

I also think the costs are pretty minimal. Tell me if I'm missing anything.
-domain name
-a host
-I'd like to use get the VBulletin license and use their software. This is the main expense. It cost about $180 for an indefinite license, but I believe I can sell it if I'm ever done using it.
-And I have a friend that is a software engineer to help me do all the HTML coding.
-Oh, and the cost of marketing the site, and my time.

Please tell me what you guys think. I really want to do this.

[entrepresooner]

Someone has already made that forum. It's called Facebook. You would have to convince everyone at your university that your forums are better than Facebook. Hate to be a downer, but I'm just callin it like I see it.

[rossco1]

Hey mate...

The University will be very skeptic about affiliating themselves with a forum. So much rubbish gets talked on these things and so many potential defamation law suits. The forum would have to be super moderated, which will not be ideal.

If you were going to make this a success, you'd have to go it alone without the help of your University.

[Squandered Halfpints]

Facebook and myspace is mainly a social tool that helps you reconnect with past friends, not helping you find new friends. I guess you can. But I don't see anybody sending messages like, 'oh youre heading to sdsu too, lets be friends' I was actually wanted to develop a site where graduating H.S. and JC transfer students can possibly find roomates if traveling to an unknown city. Rather than getting a thrown into a dorm and hoping you'd like your roommate, find a random posting on craigslit, or just getting a studio by yourself. This was the idea started out as. I figured the best way to try and do it would be developing a forum around this topic and many others, like the ones above I mentioned (facebook,myspace, or anything else out there doesn't really do this, and I don't know of any type of site that does).

But I threw this idea out when I found out that forums are not only hard to start, but they aren't really good for profit. And even thought my school has a population of 35,000, that is nowhere near a big enough market apparently. It would be a really useful tool, and I wish it existed. But I don't really know how it could get started without any substantial funding, and no profit for a long period of time - so I'm guessing thats why it doesn't exist.

[rossco1]

Facebook and myspace is mainly a social tool that helps you reconnect with past friends, not helping you find new friends. I guess you can. But I don't see anybody sending messages like, 'oh youre heading to sdsu too, lets be friends' I was actually wanted to develop a site where graduating H.S. and JC transfer students can possibly find roomates if traveling to an unknown city. Rather than getting a thrown into a dorm and hoping you'd like your roommate, find a random posting on craigslit, or just getting a studio by yourself. This was the idea started out as. I figured the best way to try and do it would be developing a forum around this topic and many others, like the ones above I mentioned (facebook,myspace, or anything else out there doesn't really do this, and I don't know of any type of site that does).

But I threw this idea out when I found out that forums are not only hard to start, but they aren't really good for profit. And even thought my school has a population of 35,000, that is nowhere near a big enough market apparently. It would be a really useful tool, and I wish it existed. But I don't really know how it could get started without any substantial funding, and no profit for a long period of time - so I'm guessing thats why it doesn't exist.

haha! too true!

also, you can make friends while on campus and by getting involved, why do you need a forum?

what extra time will you have to sit on a forum?

now, if you started a more news oriented website, with alot of these other features you mentioned, this may be a lot more successful, but as you mentioned... will be costly to launch.