Need advice on building a community

[liana]

What kind of advice can you offer to someone who's just starting out building a community of people online. We're planning to charge a monthly fee for matching people with an interest in multuplayer games.

[Jruss]

Before anything else,
How do you know there is a market for it?
I would determine, via 2 page survey site & game forums, if gamers want and would or could pay (how much) for such a community.

If so, what game/s specifically… then determine which game has the largest number of interested players so you can easily target them as 1st members.

To get ‘em to fill out survey = Offer discount on membership + report on How To something…. Avoid FSOD, player kill, level up faster tips, or dealing with bullies, hackers, & nuubs

Then… if ya know ya got a market = give discount for pre-pay 1-2-3 year memberships so you have $$$ in hand to pay for site development

…then th fun tech stuff

[rogerd]

Liana, getting a paid community going from scratch will be kind of challenging unless you have a real value proposition. Most communities are free, or have major free components; the ones that have successfully charged have often build a loyal core before adding fees.

Some of the threads in the library - [webmasterworld.com...] - may have good ideas.

Since one of the good things about forums is the spiderable content they create, you'll have to decide what to make generally available. If all of your content is password-protected, you'll miss out on many SE referrals.

(Welcome to WebmasterWorld, JRuss!)