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Tiny genre sites always dying


xexes
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I've noticed a long-standing trend when it comes to creating a new roleplay site of a tiny genre. The genre tends to be tiny because it's based on something super old, or super-ceded by a bigger genre, or maybe you just have to read the books to understand, or maybe because it's just so little known, or maybe, it's the first roleplay of its kind. But the sentiment remains that these tiny genres are "mud-puddles" - you don't get new members flowing in, only existing genre members who hop from one site to another.

 

And the trend that I'm noticing is death. Lots and lots of death. Some genres are so bad about this that the crowd flows from one site that's doing well to the next new and shiny site as soon as it appears, leaving the site that was doing well suddenly dying for no apparent reason (really, the reason was that a new site in the genre opened).

 

I've been thinking about this for a long time and I don't really know why.

 

What do you guys think about this?

Edited by xexes
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Some are like that, the site hoppers which confuses me because I would hate to start my stories from the beginning over and over again. Some genres just get no attention because they are too niche. I tried a few years back to do a Repo Men site which didn't work then I tried a Repo Men/TiMER crossover (which are two tiny niches) and that didn't work either. This is actually part of why I'm creating an original site with bits and pieces from many different niche fandoms that I enjoy and make it something that I can't say is a specific "fandom" at all.

 

I'm not sure if it's that you have to read/watch something to get it but it can get frustrating when some of the most inspiring stuff to you is niche.

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From the time I've known you, @xexes, you have always seemed to be someone who picks out the difficult questions and problems. You pick and poke at them and turn them over in an effort to find some answer or solution to them, because it feels good to solve a problem. I've always really appreciated this about you, and how much thought you put into voicing your opinions and concerns, especially because I'm the same way.

 

As to what I think about what you've pointed out... I can't say that I really "think" much about it. It definitely happens. Exactly the way you've described it! But I think it's just another one of those patterns in RP. If the cycle is to be broken, I think that there has to be some way to bend a bit. Either find new ways to advertise and reach a wider audience, or alter the setting and lore some so that people who aren't familiar with the fandom can still join up and get involved. It requires a lot of effort, but in the end it could possibly amount to the same amount of effort you would have to put into any other kind of site.

 

I suppose panfandoms and multi-genre sites have a place there, as well. Kind of like what @Morrigan's said, it could very well be that you set up the setting of the panfandom/multigenre so that it is heavily influenced by a niche fandom, but still has room for other people to get involved.

 

I would guess also that one reason why people move from site to site so much within a niche fandom is that all of the sites are more or less the same, with none of them offering something very unique that the others don't have. Doing something different might help give a site more staying power, even when other new ones open up.

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3 hours ago, Gothams Reckoning said:

with none of them offering something very unique that the others don't have. Doing something different might help give a site more staying power, even when other new ones open up.

 

You made SO many great points  and I really loved this one in particular! There are so many repetitive genres and when site creators ask polls about what players want to see, the top answer is always "something different!".

 

I wish I could say that having something different is always successful, but I've seen some different sites, even brilliantly different, that also fail. It's as if success is a big dice roll and welp, someone's gotta get the unfortunate dice results; we can't all win. :' (

 

I happened upon a directory site and it had sites organized something like this: Fantasy, Fantasy-cross over, Based-On, Original, Harry Potter Pre-Potter, Harry Potter Post-Potter. Both HP sections were quite populated! While I am proud of Rowlings work and the many HP sites out there, the fact that we divide the roleplay by a single element in the entire book is maybe exactly telling of what Gotham said right here. It's gotten a little better in recent years with categorizing by "Marauder" and "Fantastic Beasts".

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Different is never a guarantee. 

Too different and you run of the risk of people not joining because of that very reason itself. People, by and large, like things very similar to what they know and like already. (It's why sequels tend to do well when they take the existing formula and alter it only slightly. But even then no guarantees because they can still make too many changes or changes in ways that people don't like.) And people can be very fickle.

 

A lot of the problem is the members themselves. They don't know what they want and have no sense of loyalty. A new site opens and they abandon current site because "OMG shiny". They may not even know/realise they're basically killing each site in the process. (Or if they do realise they may not care or see anything wrong with it. Until they see the issue themselves and want to change then nothing will.)

 

Another issue is, quite simply, advertising is difficult and very hit/miss. You can hit a hundred sites a day but that doesn't guarantee anything. It doesn't even mean that many people will see your site. Google might not even see your site (or in worst case it does but because of how the algorithms work it deems a site as spam). Directories also are very hit/miss. (Some directories are virtually pointless to advertise in unless you're either one of the widely known/liked members, have a fairly generic premise or follow most of the trends du jour. And may whatever deity you praise help you if you don't toe the accepted lines... you'll never get anywhere.)

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People don't like 'new' or 'different'; they prefer to stick to what they know. That, and the stupid mindset 'I won't join until someone else joins first''. When everyone and their aunt thinks the same way, no one joins, the game dies--- rinse and repeat.

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I was told by a lot of people that my site was pretty niche. It really is, but it's attracted a small pool of super innovative, open, and sweet loyal people. It's also very ambitious in terms of the over-all plot and how many bodies can fill specific groups. This is something that I keep in mind, as to the site's over-all survival. 

 

I think part of it is an admin's creativity, commitment, and enthusiasm. If an admin can stay enthused, be super excited, and all that, that's the kind of attitude that a lot of people are drawn to and want to be involved in. Commitment is vital, as well as long-term planning. Creativity, though, I think is the most important. This creativity is what helps with, like, the other part of the reason for a small site's survival...

 

That reason being, people like to be motivated and they like shiny. A lot of us have an attention span of a gnat, including me. I won't lie. xD There are also a lot of peeps who have a more long-term attention span and I have so much respect for them. But on topic! An admin's creativity in appealing to members is a huge deal.

 

I've watched both big sites and small sites just die because an admin or heavy-hitting members who became big pillars in community lost interest. Lost enthusiasm. And had no heart for motivating and making the site fun. Maybe they got discouraged because their site is too niche, too small, or something that they turned out to not enjoy running. That's always a sad thing when it happens. 

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16 hours ago, kay said:

I was told by a lot of people that my site was pretty niche. It really is, but it's attracted a small pool of super innovative, open, and sweet loyal people. It's also very ambitious in terms of the over-all plot and how many bodies can fill specific groups. This is something that I keep in mind, as to the site's over-all survival. 

 

I think part of it is an admin's creativity, commitment, and enthusiasm. If an admin can stay enthused, be super excited, and all that, that's the kind of attitude that a lot of people are drawn to and want to be involved in. Commitment is vital, as well as long-term planning. Creativity, though, I think is the most important. This creativity is what helps with, like, the other part of the reason for a small site's survival...

 

That reason being, people like to be motivated and they like shiny. A lot of us have an attention span of a gnat, including me. I won't lie. xD There are also a lot of peeps who have a more long-term attention span and I have so much respect for them. But on topic! An admin's creativity in appealing to members is a huge deal.

 

I've watched both big sites and small sites just die because an admin or heavy-hitting members who became big pillars in community lost interest. Lost enthusiasm. And had no heart for motivating and making the site fun. Maybe they got discouraged because their site is too niche, too small, or something that they turned out to not enjoy running. That's always a sad thing when it happens. 

 

I would also add that perhaps a fight or disagreement might occur between the long standing members/admins/moderators that cause a rift which is very difficult or impossible to fix and that can cause a site to die. I don't mind playing on other boards if I can find a place for my characters on there, but it's also nice to have a place which is mine and can do things which I can't do on the other site. As long as the site interests me, I'll stay on it.

 

I've not found much luck with panfandom sites because there never seems to be enough people on them to keep me interested who have the same interests as I do. They seem to attract a lot of people who are interested in the 'big' sci-fi/fantasy/comics thing of the moment, such as the Marvel universe, or have a large member base of anime/manga characters and OCs, but only one or two people who are interested in an older fandom.

 

I find that site directories (especially those that don't have forums and other services attached) tend to have the same sites advertised in them, tumblr and livejournal (if anyone still does livejournal!) blogs have the same sites advertising in them over and over again. As a result, you're probably advertising your site to the same audience all the time and it is likely that people won't join because they aren't interested. (The repeated ads on tumblr every few hours might put people off, too. There is such a thing as repeating too much and on LJ, I found an entire page taken up by the same ad for the same board near enough.)

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Wholly agree with VirusZero. The problem here is to do with all the RPers out there who are disloyal, self-entitled and have the attention span of a lettuce. It's always hard on niche genres or original settings for this reason. Dare I say, even if the setting incorporates inspiration from a number of popular niches, it's still hard. Example, my site uses inspiration from everything from Blade Runner to Firefly. We had a dozen newbies join up at opening, offering them threads and plot ideas and everything they could want. And guess how many of them stuck around for more than a few weeks? None.

 

Goes with the territory I think. Statistically speaking, RPers are going to ditch you. And I'm guessing that's just much more noticeable on sites that don't receive 50 new members per day, because they actually need a few people to be loyal and stick around.

 

And also agree that new and different don't guarantee anything, in fact I'd say go too far different and you'll drive people away. Lots of members nowadays seem afraid of actually throwing themselves into the community (the types who sit on their hands and expect threads to fall into their lap, then leave after two days if their super isolated character and impossible thread concept has no replies), let alone trying out new things.

 

Is dark times friends. :(

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7 hours ago, Icewolf said:

 

I would also add that perhaps a fight or disagreement might occur between the long standing members/admins/moderators that cause a rift which is very difficult or impossible to fix and that can cause a site to die. I don't mind playing on other boards if I can find a place for my characters on there, but it's also nice to have a place which is mine and can do things which I can't do on the other site. As long as the site interests me, I'll stay on it.

 

I've not found much luck with panfandom sites because there never seems to be enough people on them to keep me interested who have the same interests as I do. They seem to attract a lot of people who are interested in the 'big' sci-fi/fantasy/comics thing of the moment, such as the Marvel universe, or have a large member base of anime/manga characters and OCs, but only one or two people who are interested in an older fandom.

 

I find that site directories (especially those that don't have forums and other services attached) tend to have the same sites advertised in them, tumblr and livejournal (if anyone still does livejournal!) blogs have the same sites advertising in them over and over again. As a result, you're probably advertising your site to the same audience all the time and it is likely that people won't join because they aren't interested. (The repeated ads on tumblr every few hours might put people off, too. There is such a thing as repeating too much and on LJ, I found an entire page taken up by the same ad for the same board near enough.)

 

 

while I haven't browsed LJ in months, I remember it having the same 4 ads everywhere. insanejournal's the same. I used to run 3 ad communities, moderated entries, and I just got sick of deleting spammers who'd submit the same bloody ad, 5 times a day.

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On 2/20/2017 at 5:49 PM, VirusZero said:

Another issue is, quite simply, advertising is difficult and very hit/miss.

 

A co-admin ran an ad campaign last month and hit about 150 sites in a month. We got 2 new members. I ran one this month and hit about 300 sites in half the time; 2 new members.

 

Yesterday, our chatbox had 8 new people in it all at the same time. Apparently someone in a chatroom found our site and linked it there. That one moment, that single link worth about 2 seconds of work, brought in more interest and nearly more members than the labor of hours and hours and months of us doing ads.

 

I'm still dumbfounded and shaken to my core that we have to be doing it wrong.

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I'm in the process of closing my tiny genre site. I've never been an admin before, so I suspect that was part of the reason why. I did get a surprising amount of people active people in the beginning, but they didn't stick around during and after the holidays. A problem I think is the point, it takes place in Japan. A fairly realistic Japan. The other problem was the backstory for why there were creatures and why you could create any creature you wanted might have been a little complicated. I figure another big part of it was timing. Opening a site in early summer is better than late autumn with school and holidays getting in the way it makes it easy to fade away.

 

 Otherwise, I agree with everyone else. I suspect the average age of forum rpers might be part of the problem. The average seems to be late teens to mid twenties. People at that age are busy juggling social activities and school. They probably want immediate gratification. I feel a bit bad for these people because I don't think they get the best experience. How can you truly have a rich character and lasting friendships with others if you keep hopping to the newest thing?

 

I worry about one project that I'm rather passionate about that I put on hold when my mom and my uncle died. My mom was in the process of painting the banner for the site. I'm a bit afraid it's too unique. I refuse to actually tell one location out in the open. Yet, I worry that people don't like lore.

 

The big problem that I think needs to be stated is unless you have something like a Harry Potter site, good luck not being a tiny genre site. Even large fandoms often times don't have very much representation. While having original "inspired by" sites are better than having a straight up tiny fandom site, that doesn't mean it will be successful either. Some won't look at a non fandom site for starters.

 

It seems entirely a roll of the die. I do suspect as Xexes has stated that we aren't reaching our larger audience. Tumblr ad sites seem to have the same few over and over. Perhaps Reddit would be better? Perhaps marketing your site as collaborative writing instead of an rpg? I'm not certain how to fix the problem, but I agree with everyone else it's certainly there. I think we've been ghettoizing ourselves, but the big question is how to change that?

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Commenting on the advertising, I have found that personal recommendations from a current player on my sim to get me the best recruits. I've played around with free ads on project wonderful, posted in directories, run a twitter for my sim... and always the best quality players come from recommendations of my players to their friends.

 

My site's kinda niche, in that it's Star Trek, but it's intelligence instead of the standard explore the galaxy, meet new lifeforms stuff that most people know Trek for. The other thing that confuses people looking from directories like this is that I don't use canon characters (which is very common in the Trek RP community, but seems to blow all your minds here o.O). I've had a few points where I've thought I wasn't going to have enough crew to make it and I'd have to close down... but like @kay mentioned, the admin team can make it with their enthusiasm... so even if I was fretting to friends outside of the game, I kept actively posting and keeping the plot moving. And we've been going strong for a year and a half now.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I run a niche site, and most of the members are friends from an older site of the same niche that died. Like...4/5 players are the people from that previous site. We've only gained a small number of new players, maybe 4 or 5, since we opened. But there's enough of us to keep a coherent story going and we're pretty much all in this for the long haul, especially considering we basically picked up where the old site left off.

 

I think with niche sites, you have to be prepared to only have a small number of players and characters and keep it going with that. If you've got the right mix of people and muse, I think that can be a really rewarding and awesome experience. But it also doesn't always work out and, more often than not, sites like that will die.

 

Hopping onto the advertising bandwagon here, I am really interested in finding new ways to advertise niche forums like this. Aside from the usual directories and tumblrs and whatnot, does anyone have any suggestions on how to expand the audience that sees our ads? Are there resources we aren't using that can help prevent site death from lack of interest/member base?

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On 3/20/2017 at 2:55 PM, Sage said:

 Aside from the usual directories and tumblrs and whatnot, does anyone have any suggestions on how to expand the audience that sees our ads? Are there resources we aren't using that can help prevent site death from lack of interest/member base?

 

I think the answer is to do the usual to attract the usual, but also to do the unusual.

 

People get tired of the same old thing because everyone does it and they're looking for something new. So go out there and try new and different things. If I list any specific thing here, everyone will do it and then it won't be new or special. If you think about it, it's never the same old thing that takes off but something new and different that becomes a fad.

 

Just understand that nothing is a guarantee, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it works later on.

 

A small word on risks:

 

Personally, my greatest fear is pouring out a bunch of effort into an avenue that yields no returns. I can tell you that I carefully watch my time spent as I am trying a new thing X and I can also tell you that X has not taken off, it's as if that carefulness isn't daring enough and that I need to spend more time producing much, much higher quality stuff even though what I am doing right now is as high quality as I am daring to do.

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