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Dominique;212837 wrote:Perhaps one of the most difficult but also one of the most rewarding things to do in this industry is to run a forum for players.
First you have the issue of initially populating the forum. This is where most new forums fail.
Then you have the tendency of people to voice mostly negative thoughts. How do you keep a natural balance?
A certain amount of controversy makes a forum flourish. How do you keep it from evolving into a flame war?
Forum members will come to you with complaints about casinos etc. How do you determine what’s legitimate?
Affiliate managers whose properties got bad press will come and complain to you. Plus, many programs have clauses that outright forbid your saying negative things about their properties. How do you handle that?
It’s a slippery slope and it takes a certain type of person to run a successful forum. What do you think these qualities are?
I’m interested to see the outcome of this thread.
Thanks for posting it Dom.
Cheers
ReneeGood thread.
– The forum owner needs to be a domain expert or major enthusiast of the forum focus (if it has one in particular, or falls under a specific niche/ marketing vertical)
– they need to be a good diplomatic
– The forum owner/mod needs to have no apparent agenda, and should be seen to value their players above money
– Integrity – not pushing dodgy stuff to their players even tho it may be lucrative (e.g. possibly having to remove a good earner like UB and Absolute Poker due to cheating, deception and no accountability)
-Intereaction – a good forum owner will run tournaments and promotions to keep people engaged within the community, and posting about these events. good content and community breeds posts (=free organic traffic) which breeds profits and a bigger stronger community.I think one of the best examples of all these factors under 1 roof is twoplustwo, one of the top 5 forums (in terms of posts/size) on the internet. It could so easily become a Zoo, instead it’s a well oiled moneymaking machine.
Interested in other thoughts! There’s bound to be some Affils on here w/ 50k registered users on their forums.. What’s your secrets girls and boys?
I run a fairly active sports forum. Im not sure if all the criteria is the same for Sports and Casinos, but I can see some similarities.
I was really lucky to start acquiring users, at the time I used another sports forum that was having internal difficulties. So I started mine as a alternate place to post. Users started using it and never left. But I see where starting a forum of any type can be very difficult.
I allow people to voice their opinion, but not to get out of hand. I look at myself as a referee who hands out technicals. I usually give several Technicals before tossing someone or deleting their account. I have deleted more accounts then I have registered users for one reason or another (spambots). One trueism I have noticed, people are creatures of habit. Once I have deleted their account for “Flaming”, it seems they will always be back sooner rather then later. Most of the time they come back toned down, which is the desired effect. So mission accomplished. I also have learned for every 1 bozo deleted you get 3-5 good users back, so deleting one bozo is not such a bad thing.
One issue that should be addressed soon after you start a forum is Spambots. If you let them go unchecked they at min. will keep registering BS names, from now to eternity. Not all the Spam Mods out their for the two popular BBS platforms seem to work, or are user friendly. I found a easy way to trick the RumorX and Auto-Writer Spambots for PHPBB v2. If anyone wants to know the trick let me know. Some forum users dont mind having 25k+ users registered with only 100 active. I try to keep my database to the min. for easy access for the BBS engine and portability if I ever have to move my site from the current servers. You can always tell when spambots have taken over a forum. They will have 50k plus registered with names like XXXLucy, LovesViagra, fhdskjfhsjskjf, etc… Just looks bad alltogether for a good new user to go through the memberlist and seeing a bunch of questionable names and little activity on the boards. Activity is what gets users back, something new to read everyday.
I have had some instances of users bad mouthing some sportsbooks who I aff for. I allow Freedom of Speech so I dont curtail anyone from expressing their opionions. I dont allow flat out lies though. Knowing some of your users and conversing with them allows me to mediaite alot more on their behalf, if a issue comes up with a SB. This seems to be a plus. In the two, instances where a SB asks me to remove some bad press. I will only if its embellished or flat out wrong. But if the information is accurate, I let it stand. If the SB dont like it maybe its time I remove them and find a different SB to promote. I only deal with A-B rated books, so I have never had much of an issue, with non-payment etc. Most concerns was slowpay 2-3 years ago after UGA. Mostpart thats corrected now.
I will say you have more of a leverage if you know your users. The idea of “Can give, can taketh away” really can be to your advantage in not allowing a Aff to get too tricky to work with. I think they may look at you different if you send them good users and one post can take them away and to a competitior.
Great Post John,
It takes a certain type of person to be able to properly get a forum running well and you seem to be it
Good JobInteresting topic Dom!
Great posts by John and pokerseo.
The purpose of participating in forums for players is to share informtion and many a time it will be negative about some operators. A forum owner needs to identify the genuine concerns and weed out the members who raise a flame with malicious intentions. He/she has to make sure that at no point of time free speech by genuine members are curbed. The power of judgement and maintaining the right balance are important along with what has been mentioned by John and pokerseo.
CasinoMeister is the best example I can think of on our industry.
