rogerd - 8:25 pm on May 29, 2004 (gmt 0)

Even if you decide to target a particular demographic segment, a forum still comes down to its topic(s). Same for magazines. You don't see a "Wealthy Suburban Male" magazine, but you do see high end golf/country club publications, glossy magazines about travel and gourmet dining, etc.

I do think that you are on a good track, Webwork. 99% of all forums are started because someone likes a topic and wants to talk about it. With some thought about demographics and how desirable the audience is to advertisers, some advance planning might increase the chance of monetizing it later. However, I think it would be a real chore to start a forum about something that you aren't familiar with and don't care about - there's just too much work involved in the early years and the probability of effective monetization is too low.

Another issue with a pure demographic approach is that web technology doesn't yet allow ads targeted by user demographics; ads are either fixed, random, or content-driven. Here's what I mean: Say you created a forum about cats that was very appealing to wealthy women. This might be a very desirable group from the standpoint of advertisers, but if you put Adsense on the pages you'll get the same pet supplies ads that every other cat forum gets. That doesn't mean that you won't be able to sell your own higher-end ads, but it will be more work than if you picked a high-end topic (like yachting) where you would attract them more easily.