I want to build a small website with community but don't know where to start

[noumaan204]

I want to build a website with a small but loyal community around it. But I guess to build a nice website one also need to be passionate about the topic they are building the website around. I am interested in these topics


1.Television - I watch a lot of tv shows and can write extensively about them.
2. Movies
3. Blogging
4. Wordpress
5. History - Now I don't really know much history but I love to read history. But since I am not an academic how can I build a website around this topic that can attract visitors and we can develop an online community?
6. Social Media and the web in general - I like to talk about the developments in web technologies, and how web is transforming and how it is transforming the society.

I am thinking that I will keep the community portion of my website on Facebook by using facebook pages, comments, etc.

I would like to know which one these topics has

1. Less competition
2. More advertisers
3. More passionate following

If you were me which topic you will choose to build upon and why?

[wheel]

I suspect 1,2 and 6 are already extremely competitive fields full of experts.
3 and 4, yawn.
5 - depends on what you mean by history. Pick a topic, an even, or a person once a week and make them come alive on the web. Seems like opportunity there.

But as a secondary point, you're goal is awfully vague, and doesn't have much point.

You really should have something like 'I am a history freak, how can I build a community'?

[lucy24]

I want to build a website with a small but loyal community around it.

Why?

I'm not saying that to be nasty. I think you've left out a key piece of information. What's your objective? To have a small pool of avid followers? To make money? To become a recognized "name"? Why do you want to build a website?

:: drifting off to Foo forum to post vaguely related thread ::

[noumaan204]

@Wheel and @Lucy24

I want to build community around quality content and expect that community to contribute content in discussions. Yes of course I want to make money out of it. But I want to do some quality work.

Actually I recently got pandalized and my adsense account was disabled. So now I am thinking about building a website that has a regular following on which I can build upon. Also a website that can attract good advertisers from buysellads.com or other similar advertisement options.

I want to do something awesome! that earns the website respect and trust over the time

[piatkow]

For "community" you need to achieve a critical mass of followers. That isn't easy, I have seen plenty of specialist sites fade away because nobody bothered to visit.

You really need to start with something with which you have a real world involvement. Talk to people, mention the site, put advertising flyers out at local and regional organisations and build from there.

[noumaan204]

@piatkow

how about making a community based on interest not on expertise. If I could provide a good platform with better quality controls on what people post, then I expect that this will create a strong community with a sense of self reliance and genuine interest in the topic.

Also I want to keep the community on some social networking site instead of my own servers. I fear that I may not be able to handle forum software, they are such memory hogs (from what I have heard).

[wheel]

I want to build community around quality content and expect that community to contribute content in discussions. Yes of course I want to make money out of it. But I want to do some quality work.

I think what a few of us are saying is that you should already know what topic, because it's a topic you know about or are passionate about. The topic should be obvious to you. Then people can advise how to grow it or monetize it.

In terms of using the community idea to build traffic, I expect that's a huge hurdle. Forums have always been extremely tough to build - far more fail than succeed, and it's a two year timespan of hard work before you have anything remotely stable. And with all the social media platforms, I'd be very apprehensive about building something that requires community input.

I might consider a blog if I was expert on something, because then it's not quite as dependent on others, and there's more control.

[noumaan204]

@wheel I know what I am passionate about but I also need to consider where I can get the most out of my efforts.

I agree with you on forum issue. I don't want to host it on my server. I am thinking about building a blog and then build a community around it using facebook and other social tools.