Is this the only active Small Business Forum online?

[Harold Mansfield]

I did some looking around recently and noticed that this seems to be the only Small Business Forum with any activity anywhere online.

All the usual suspects look like they haven't had any activity since 2008 or even earlier or have been left unattended and are littered with spam, and the company forums like Bank of America are really desolate.

The only one that looks like it may have some kind of activity is American Express' Open Forums, but alas, I can't really look around since I don't have an American Express card anymore.

That's about it. There is really nothing else out there besides us.

[cbscreative]

Well I knew the original SBF went to a hot, fiery place inside the earth where spammers spew their venom as they suffer eternal torment, but I didn't realize we were the only active small biz forum. Is it because they are poorly managed and let it happen? I don't know. But it's good for us that we have great members and have salvaged the what was left of the old SBF before the members all disbanded out of frustration.

I was convinced that a useful forum still had demand, and the concensus when we started this one supported that conclusion. Long live this SBF! And the members are what makes it work.

[Spider]

Who cares if there are any others. This is the only one that counts!

[Harold Mansfield]

Who cares if there are any others. This is the only one that counts!

As we used to say back in Detroit, "True Dat!".

(Translation for Spider: "Ain't that the truth!" or "You got that right!"):)

[vangogh]

I just did a search for small business forum and started checking the top results. Most of the forums listed seemed active to me. A couple didn't have anything new, but the majority have posts from today.

Seems like there's still plenty of active small business forums out there.

[Blessed]

I barely keep up with this one... don't think I'll be looking around for anywhere else to post :) But I would be surprised if this truly was the only active small business forum on the net.

[billbenson]

I think we have kind of a unique niche of members here. A lot of us are one man shows. There is quality web info which is really hard to find for the non web people. Just so much inaccurate information.

Notably absent are franchises and MLM's I saw a franchise article that was kind of interesting the other day and almost posted it just to put something in that forum newer than last July.

One of the notable things here is that most people have also made it on their own rather than paying for a packaged solution like a franchise or mlm, both of which can be profitable if done right.

Spam maintenance is also a big factor here and another small quality board I am on.

[dynocat]

I was member of a very active forum for small businesses with ecommerce sites. It was started by a disgruntled member of a non-responsive and failing web host, so most members came from the host's member forum. It did have some really good business discussions. That too is now inactive.

I'm glad I found SBF and appreciate the helpful people here. Wish I had more to offer.

[Harold Mansfield]

I just did a search for small business forum and started checking the top results. Most of the forums listed seemed active to me. A couple didn't have anything new, but the majority have posts from today.

Seems like there's still plenty of active small business forums out there.

Hmmn, I don't know what I was searching, but upon a re look I did see a couple.
Still, this one does have a certain personality, particularly, if you post up a question, you will actually get an answer..multiple answers without solicitation.

I looked at one of the one's that I mentioned and on almost every post, when someone asked a question or for opinions, someone else inevitably chimed in with an offer for services (without answering the question) ..that is really tacky.

[vangogh]

We definitely have a personality here. Any community really does and I think what we do that most other forums don't is clean out the noise quickly. Most forums will ban the obvious spammers, but the not so obvious spammers are able to stay. That keeps us a bit smaller than other forums, but overall I think it means we have one of the strongest signals anywhere.

The one small business forum other than us that I would recommend to people is the one at Small Business Brief (http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/forum/). I joined there the same time I joined the old SBF and the only reason my activity there dropped was a lack of time. You can only be active in so many places at a time.

[cbscreative]

When it comes to our signal to noise ratio, I need to add that vangogh is a noise removing machine. There are even rumors he's not a real person but a robot. None of the rest of us here do much by comparison simply because vangogh never seems to sleep or rest. I'm amazed.

[jamestl2]

What was the old SBF like?

I think that was before my time here...

[Harold Mansfield]

What was the old SBF like?

I think that was before my time here...

The only thing that I remember about it was that towards the end, before VG opened this one, that it went down ALOT. There were constant server outages or database errors.

[cbscreative]

What was the old SBF like?

I think that was before my time here...

At one time, it was a great forum. Many of the members here were part of that. In early 2008, it changed hands and things quickly went downhill...WAY down. In July, they went dark for over a week. When it did come back up, it was like eborg said, datbase errors galore. While it was down, vangogh and I discussed our options and decided to start this. I can only take credit for approaching vangogh with the idea. He's the one who knew what to do and ran with it.

We were keeping it quiet pubicly, but as the members discussed where they could go to regroup, it became obvious we had to reveal our plans before there was no one left to reveal them to. Several of the active members were in on that discussion and were excited to hear what we were up to. Many of the others managed to find out about it later and found us here, so we fortunately managed to regain many of the active members, even some who bailed earlier in the year after a fiasco that took place when the forum changed hands.

As it turned out, vangogh was single handedly holding together what was left of the old forum. I didn't know that when I contacted him, but he liked the idea of doing this because he could make decisions without having to deal with the owners of the old forum who were completely unresponsive even to him. They were ignoring not just the members, but even the only mod who was left.

Prior to that, it was a lot like this forum and attracted great members. What's nice here is this forum is better than the old one ever was, and has many of the same people who made the other one great at one time.

[greenoak]

i never found any good ones...mostly young guys wanting to give marketing advice..... but maybe without much actual experience.... it seemed that way anyway on the ones i tried.....the ones for women in business are so bad...you would never understand...

i started one for retailers....and it has over 900 posts...but not enough members....we want it private so its kind of hard to recruit....there are about 40 with 10/15 who talk once in a while....
ann

[dynocat]

i never found any good ones...mostly young guys wanting to give marketing advice..... but maybe without much actual experience.... it seemed that way anyway on the ones i tried.....the ones for women in business are so bad...you would never understand...

i started one for retailers....and it has over 900 posts...but not enough members....we want it private so its kind of hard to recruit....there are about 40 with 10/15 who talk once in a while....
ann

Can I ask you reasons for wanting it private? In a way I understand, but opening it to new members can really bring in new ideas and experience.

I'm specifically asking because I'm helping several Montana antique stores get online and could stand some learning about the business.

[vangogh]

James the old SBF was pretty much like what we have here up until about 2 years ago. Steve described the situation pretty well above. I'll add a few more details.

In the few months before the site went down I was the only one moderating. Ownership of the forum had changed hands a few times and the owners at the time weren't really doing much. They had moved the site to a new domain without letting anyone know and when they did it screwed up a lot of things. Signatures not working, months of posts missing, etc.

I emailed the owner several times about getting admin status so I could fix some things and eventually got limited admin privileges.

Still I was wondering why I was the only person doing any work, especially since I was a volunteer. I had been thinking of starting a forum as I figured if I was doing the work I might as well own the thing. I never did anything though and quite honestly was thinking of just leaving the place.

In July the forum went down like Steve said. At first all that would display was database errors. I emailed the owner and he changed things so a default page showed saying they were upgrading the forum and would be back soon. I emailed several times, first offering to help, then offering to buy the forum. There was never any word back. 2 weeks later the forum was working again though like before several months of posts were missing, signatures didn't work, etc.

Most everyone was annoyed. I could sense even in the months leading up to the downtime people were thinking of leaving and the forum being down seemed like the breaking point. Steve and I had been emailing during the time the forum was down and we talked about setting up a new place. When people were talking about leaving I asked everyone to stick around a few days and see what I could.

I spent a day or two researching what would be needed and then another day or so getting everything set up. We left a few posts in the old place directing people here and within a few days had most of the active members posting here.

The old forum is now just a haven for spam. I think every so often there's a legit post or two, but for the most part it's about 99% spam posts. The owners obviously don't care about the place I think they only wanted the forum because it was the largest out there and ranks #1 for most of the big keywords. They have ads all over the place. The domain is the same as this one except it's .com instead of .net.

[billbenson]

I looked at one of the one's that I mentioned and on almost every post, when someone asked a question or for opinions, someone else inevitably chimed in with an offer for services (without answering the question) ..that is really tacky.

You could almost make a boilerplate here of a successful forum:


Keep spam and noise out
Good niche market
Encourage people to help others.

[vangogh]

You could almost make a boilerplate here of a successful forum:

Keep spam and noise out
Good niche market
Encourage people to help others.



Pretty much what we try to do here. :)

It was a conscious decision from the start not only to be aggressive in fighting spam, but also to get rid of the usual noise most forums attract. Too many other forums allow the silly "me too" posts that contribute nothing and seem mostly to be there for the signature link.

Keeping those posts out greatly increases the signal to noise ratio of the forum.

[Blessed]

I appreciate the efforts Steve (and all you other moderator's too).

Honestly if the spam and worthless "me too" posts weren't kept out I wouldn't stick around. I don't have time to weed through all of that to get to the good stuff.

[vangogh]

You should see what it's like on a webmaster forum where I admin. The obvious spam is deleted, bit the majority of the "me too" posts are left. So many threads are completely useless. You don't want to respond and you feel sorry for the people who asked the question.

You also end up spending a lot of time wading through post after post of garbage to find anything worth commenting on.

The sad part is so many of those useless posts help the forum to rank and pull traffic. If you search small business stuff the old SBF still ranks well because of all the content and the links pointing to the old content. Clearly it stopped being a useful place a couple of years ago, but at the same time it likely gets most of the search traffic. A definite flaw in Google's algorithm.

[Harold Mansfield]

I think the same can be said for forums in general, there aren't really a lot of good ones out there anymore.
A couple of years ago, I probably frequented 3-4 forums daily and another 5 regularly. Mostly webmaster forums of some kind.

Everyone and their Mother had a webmaster forum.

Most of them are now either gone or abandoned.

Today, I go to 2-3 forums weekly. One business ( this one obviously), one music, and now one for Wordpress MU/BUddypress.
That's really all I need.

[vangogh]

True. I do think there are good forums out there on a variety of topics. They may not be the ones showing up at the top of the search results though. I also get the feeling many are smaller communities as opposed to the large free for all forums where most anything goes.

In the end a good forum is one where the leadership is strong at clearing out the noise and directing the community and even more where the community itself is strong and allowed to grow in its own direction.

[greenoak]

dyoncat....the memers want the forum just to be for actual store owners....meaning they have to show the moderator they have a store....that way their customers cant get on..but any store owners are welcome...if they find us.... ..
its not for antique stores alone....its for general retail talk among retailers......
good luck on your forum.... its hard to get enough people talking ...and if you go retail in antiques it probably would be all about ...how much is this worth....
ann

[jamestl2]

Wow, just checked out the other Small Business Forum. It probably took me at least five minutes over there just to find a non-spam, non-"me too" post.



You should see what it's like on a webmaster forum where I admin.


Am I familiar with this particular Webmaster Forum, Steve? :D


One thing I've concluded over the past few months, (or maybe past years, hard to pinpoint), is that many of the forum staffers out there only care about traffic or post numbers, or advertising revenues. And when that's all they care about, the quality of the forum decreases dramatically.

I don't post as much as I used to on pretty much all the forums I used to frequent. I got tired of offering honest, helpful suggestions that went unheard and unconsidered (Not always by just forum leaders, but often from regular members too). And I wasn't going to waste my breath into a vacuum where all people do is bury their heads in the sand and disregard facts and advice straight-up. Basically, if someone wants advice, they're going to have to seek it out themselves from someone such as myself. This doesn't go for just that one particular forum I used to post regularly in, it's happened to be a common theme amongst a couple of the places I've posted at. This pretty much goes double when you're a volunteer and active member of the particular forum (which happens to be my case 100% of the time).

And if a mod or admin or whomever from a particular forum just happens to appreciate the quality of posts one such as myself happens to make, and they'd offer me a position as a Moderator (or even Administrator), I'll probably reject it. I really have no interest in assisting a place fight spam, flame wars, etc. when I have no stake in the place at all. I'm not saying that because I'm feeling greedy, but because I don't want all the potential hard work to go relatively unnoticed, or when the owners don't give anything back, and I need to take care of myself before my voice actually has any impact.

Sometimes forum owners and staffers seem to forget that it's the regular, usually unpaid, members that create most of the threads and write the majority of posts. Luckily this is one those few places that hasn't forgotten.

[vangogh]

You are familiar with the webmaster forum. Wouldn't you agree there's a lot of noise there?


One thing I've concluded over the past few months, (or maybe past years, hard to pinpoint), is that many of the forum staffers out there only care about traffic or post numbers, or advertising revenues. And when that's all they care about, the quality of the forum decreases dramatically.

I think that's exactly it. The other thing I've noticed is that many forum owners don't really check in with staff. They forget though that the staff is pretty much volunteer so there's a limit to what they'll do. If the owners don't give any direction to the moderators the moderators do less and less.


Sometimes forum owners and staffers seem to forget that it's the regular, usually unpaid, members that create most of the threads and write the majority of posts.

Yep. Too many forget and just take their members for granted.

[billbenson]

As well, a lot of the larger forums are part of medium or large companies. Frequently, just like their websites, they don't know how to use them to market their company. Corporate managers know very little about web management, frequently. They know even less about forum management.

[vangogh]

Also true. I think another thing with larger companies is they just assume they can leave the forum on autopilot and be done with it. Maybe someone checks in every few weeks, but that's about it. Some people see user generated content as something they can profit from without doing anything, when you really have to nurture it.

It's really all about the community. The more you give to the community whether you're the forum owner or a random member, the more you'll ultimately get back from it. If you try to extract from the community without contributing it usually doesn't work out well for you.