subscription based message board?

[satpak77]

Hello

I am looking for feedback regarding a "subscription based" phpbb message board, which will likely be $50 or less a year. This site will target baby boomers.

How successful are commercial based message boards? Anyone have experience with them?

thanks

[rogerd]

With 99% of the forums on the Web available for free, you have to have a solid value proposition if you are going to sell subscriptions. In particular, it may be very hard to get off the ground - most subscription-based boards I've seen were very popular forums before a subscription model was adopted; some, like this one, continue to maintain a mostly free approach.

If you use a subscription model, you should make the value you are delivering very clear. A few ideas:
- Access to unique, valuable content and private forums
- Greater member privileges (e.g., storage, self-promotion ability, etc.)

Consider a free trial period or low-cost monthly billing to reduce the barrier to getting started - $50 isn't a large amount of money, but I would expect considerable resistance to signing up by potential new members.

[satpak77]

Thank you for your reply. My game plan is a free message board to cultivate interest and then in maybe 12 months go subscription.

[rogerd]

I think that's wise - build the volume and a base of content first, and then decide if you will be successful with a paid forum.

One element to consider: if you find that search engines are driving much of your new traffic, making some or all of your forums viewable by paid members only will prevent your content from being spidered and indexed. You'll have to decide how to deal with this issue when the time comes.