My new business - advice needed.

[on_way_to_fame@hotmail.co]

Hey everyone, as this is my first post at this forum, a very big hi to everyone. Well actually i need a lot of advice regarding this web site i am interest in launching, and any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I am also looking for a partner who is good at web designing, preferably within UK, so after reading the concept below if anyone is interested please contact me on msn at on_way_to_fame@hotmail.com.


I am staying in New Delhi, India, and would be shifting to Birmingham, UK after two months, as I would be joining university there. I have a lot of innovative kind of side businesses in mind I could do once i am in UK. So I was trying to search and add as many people from Birmingham as I can, to my MSN list and make some friends there, so that I can get to know local people better. So I wandered through many forums and chat rooms, although I was able to find quite a few people from Birmingham, i didn't find any good chat room or message board for this.

So i thought if I combine the business idea and the idea of making local friends, I can create a message board for Birmingham people myself. That will firstly help me make some local contacts, and secondly if i can get many people from Birmingham to sign up a sort of ready market for any kind of business I want to do later within Birmingham or UK, as the website would give me potential clients, and help me advertise any of my businesses.

So i made a forum myself, called Birmingham bar which was basically meant only for the people of Birmingham. Then i thought it would be too difficult to get reasonable traffic if its only Birmingham oriented so i made some changes and made it more UK oriented, and i thought it would still remain a market for me to implement many business ideas that I have in mind.

Then i decided that I will make it more of a global forum, and once i have about one or two thousand members i will buy my own domain name and make it a full fledged site. Then as the number of member’s increase i will give more facilities, probably start getting some advertising revenue and at the same time try my businesses through that site, but all that was a long-term plan. Then i had a few discussions with people who are in the business. A person who owns a major UK portal and then a friend of mine who is a moderator in a famous forum. They both said it would be difficult to get people to sign up in the present format of categories i have on my forum, as they are not specializing in anything particular, for example people would join a poetry forum, so that they could get help on poetry, a cricket forum to discuss cricket, etc., but mine is a sort of little bit of everything forum ( please check the categories at http://birminghambar.proboards32.com ), and one of my moderator mates advised me to make it a specialized sort of forum for a select target market at the moment, for e.g. my target market could be only teens, or only the people of UK and besides that once i have decided the target market i will seriously have to think more precisely on why they would like to join my forum, as in, what benefits they will get out of it, because i have been noticing, although i haven’t really done too much advertising as of yet, but already i have been able to drive good traffic, but still people aren’t really signing up, the reason probably being that they come and see that there are hardly 20 members and a very little number of posts, so there’s no use of signing up.

ok so these guys told me to do the following things. (1) To buy my own domain, (2) to choose my target market,(3) and then re arrange the categories on the forum, so that the members might feel they could get something beneficial out of joining this forum.
Now i am totally confused because i think i have to do the planning from the beginning, choose my target market again, and then decide the categories.

Now as I am a bit confused I have a few questions I would like your suggestion on

Firstly, what sort of target market should I opt for to start off with, so that I can get maximum traffic and at the same time provide some service which satisfies needs of members better, for eg, an only teens forum, with different categories only for teens.

Secondly, it would easier for me to get more members from India to join in first because of better links here, plus more moderators from here, willing to work harder. My main aim is UK, so these are my two areas of focus in the later stages, as I can use these members to sell products and all later as well, through the site, as I have good links in these two countries, but at the initial stages I think I should go in for worldwide members, what do you suggest on this?

Thirdly, if I do go in for a teens forum to start off with, I actually want it to be teens and university students included, so I wont be exactly able to call it a teens forum, so is there a solution to this?

Birmingham Bar is a name I would like to change, as it makes the forum look very much Birmingham oriented, so I would like to give it a more funky kind of a name, although I dont want the word teens to be included in the name as later on when I have good traffic, I may like to open it up for other age groups and classes.

Well thanks a lot for reading this long post, but hope to get some quick replies, as I have to open my .com before I leave this country.
If you would directly like to discuss about this with me, please add me on msn messenger at on_way_to_fame@hotmail.com

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[peterjhale]

Welcome to the forum.

You have a lot of questions that you really need to answer very quickly.

Firstly, what sort of target market should I opt for to start off with, so that I can get maximum traffic and at the same time provide some service which satisfies needs of members better, for eg, an only teens forum, with different categories only for teens.

Why are you going for maximum traffic? It depends on what you want to sell. Selling ads on a forum will not make you much money unless you really have hundreds of members. Remember teens will already have their favourite places to go to.

Secondly, it would easier for me to get more members from India to join in first because of better links here, plus more moderators from here, willing to work harder. My main aim is UK, so these are my two areas of focus in the later stages, as I can use these members to sell products and all later as well, through the site, as I have good links in these two countries, but at the initial stages I think I should go in for worldwide members, what do you suggest on this?

Just concentrate on what you want in the end. If you want a forum for people from india living in the UK then fine - but really specify what you want and focus on that

Thirdly, if I do go in for a teens forum to start off with, I actually want it to be teens and university students included, so I wont be exactly able to call it a teens forum, so is there a solution to this?

Stay focused. Teens span 13-19 - some will be interested others not.

You may have to split the ages up as 19 y/os are not interested in stuff 13 y/os are doing.

Also - register your domain ASAP - it doesn't cost much.

You'll also have to work out how you are going to get people to your site - have you any ideas at all ?

[on_way_to_fame@hotmail.co]

Hi peter, thanks a lot for taking time out for reading my long post and giving a very detailed reply. Well from the time i first made this post, i think i have solved quite a few issues and decided on a lot of things, in other words you can say i have taken the first step.
Firstly i have talked to the hosting company and i will be registering my domain name and web space tomorrow.
Secondly, i have deicded my target market, and that is basically the youth from India and UK, and to get both these markets together, i have come up with a new concept, i.e i have made it a competition site between Indian and Uk people. Although i have thought of quite a few types of competition i can host and a sort of points system, which would also induce the current members from both regions to make other from their regions join the site. At the moment i haven't launched the site, and its still a small forum. You can check it out at

http://birminghambar.proboards32.com

so that you will understand my concept better. But the sort of budget i have doesn't allow me to design the type of web site i want too, and now that is the second major problem i am having, therefore i would like to partner with a person who is a good programmer and a designer. I would also like to have a few suggestions on what sort of competitions i can host at the site. I hope you guys can have a look at the site, and give me some good suggestions.
Thanks a lot for the help.

[peterjhale]

I'm not sure this is going to work but I know nothing about your market.


I suggest you find forums with your target audience in today and see what they are discussing about (probably big brother) and see what their needs are. You can always post to find out.

This is basic market research.

[on_way_to_fame@hotmail.co]

hi mate
big brother is something i am sure, would be hot.
well so to keep my budget under control, as well as see how the target audience is responding, i got a new idea, tell me if you think this can work, to start off with, i can only start with forums at my site, and divide them into, indian forums and uk forums seperately, then as the number of members increase, i can start with quizzes and all ?
can you give me some more tips on market reserach on my theme.

thanks
ashish.

[inbakumar]

Ashish,

It looks like you have so many ideas in your head. What is your main purpose of visit to UK? From your first post I understand that you are coming here to study at university. If that is your main reason for coming over here then you should think about it more than anything else.

Also I think you as an indian national, coming to UK on a student visa; you would have been excluded from getting involved in any business ventures (both paid and unpaid). Breaking the visa conditions could result in getting you deported back to India. Therefore, could you please let us know of your immigration status here before asking for our advice as we shouldn't be party to your potential law-breaking activities?

Personally I like enterprising people but don't like them to break laws. I'm trying to be cruel to be kind here.

Regards

Joel

[louise]

yes, you need to stay focused for sure

[on_way_to_fame@hotmail.co]

Hi Joel,
Thank for your reply.

Well to clarify your doubt, i wont be breaking any law firstly because the web site would be registered in India, and secondly i may not really get it registered from my own name. It may be registered on my sister's name as she also has a role in it. Although even if its registered on my name, but in India, do you think i would be breaking any law ?. It would be really nice if you could share your knowledge on this.

Regarding staying focus, well i have always been involved in small businesses even in India while i had my studies, but i didn't allow it to affect my results much (and yeah trust me indian education system is one of the toughest in the world ). As i would be doing a business course in university there, it would really give me a chance to practically implement some of my knowledge.

Would like to hear more.
Regards