If you want to use MyBB for Business, you’ll need a good niche for your forum.
For starters – don’t create yet another general gaming forum. The web is swamped with such forums.
If you want to go for a gaming forum, specify the forum on a certain game or certain aspects of games.
TheBorgGaming has been a successful gaming forum for example. They focussed on certain racing games like World Racing 2 or Grand Theft Auto. And they provided additional value for their visitors in form of free modifications and addons for these games. Once they stopped hosting these free DLCs, a lot of members lost interest in this gaming forum.
You can see that the most important part of a website project – and that includes MyBB forums – is to generate additional value for visitors (who might turn into registered members later).
If you offer something that is valuable for people, they’ll link your project and tell others about it. Your site will grow and visitors are more likely to register.
So choose a niche in which you can create or provide unique valuable content.
The best content will not work if people are not looking for it. Use tools like ubersuggest or Google Adwords Keyword-Planner to find the topics that people are actually searching for.
If a lot of people are searching for a certain topic, there will most likely be a lot of competitors already. Try to find a niche that has a low competition with medium search requests for starters. Especially make sure that there is no forum in this niche yet. It is no problem if there are blogs or shops in that niche. They’ll most likely not conflict with your forum because they serve a different purpose. They might even link your forum as source or possibility for discussion.
Another good reason for picking a niche are topics that can cause a controversy. Bulletin boards have always been discussion boards too. If members have different opinions about topics in your niche, they’ll most likely write more and be more active.
This is all very analytic stuff, what about the passion for the niche?
There are a lot of guides with the message Follow Your Passion, the Money Will Come. I’m not sure that this will always happen. In the end, you are trying to build a business. You want to create a MyBB forum to make money with it. And making money always means hard work in the end.
If you are passionate about the niche, you’ll most likely do better work at the beginning. But some days you’ll be annoyed by the work your project causes. And you might take it better if the forum pays your bills.
I’d personally always go for money and passion but if I have to pick one, I’ll go for money because I have to pay my bills and my renter does not accept passion as a payment.
As a conclusion, the profitable niche for your MyBB Business looks like this:
- Special and limited topic (no general forum)
- You can provide unique valuable content for this niche
- People are searching for this niche
- There are no other forums or boards in this niche
- Topic aspects can be discussed controversially
A current example that somehow came to my mind would be a forum about swinger chairs. It is a special topic, better than a general furniture or garden forum. I can write reviews about swinger chairs easily by scraping amazon or heading to my local furniture dealer which means I can provide unique content.
There are a few thousand search requests for swinger chairs per month.
There is no swinger chairs forum yet.
I’m not sure about the discussion options of swinger chairs but there are different brands and people might write about their personal preferences.
I’m not passionate about that topic though. And I’m not sure it will pay out a lot (although you might make some bucks using affiliate programs for swinger chairs). But if you like that idea, take it and start a swinger chair forum with MyBB!
I hope I could show you how to find a profitable niche for your MyBB. Use MyBB for Business and if you have any questions or comments please post them! I’d love to read your ideas too.