whoever runs this forum doesnt have much business sense. Why would you allow the continued ostracism of one clubs fans to take place pushing its supporters to other forums/websites when they have the most fans?
given you've taken the time to voice what seems like a legitimate concern, i'll answer your post in a serious manner & leave humour to the side..
firstly, at a higher level, your concern that the people who run this forum has no business sense seems strange to me, given that we are seeing more and more new people sign up every day, and an increase in the number and quality of sponsors who are aligning themselves to the forum. infact, you'll find that it's not just league fans who recognise the size and importance of this forum.
feel free to have a read of this report, in particular slide 30.. it lists this very forum as one of the top 5 visited forum sites in australia...
http://www.aimia.com.au/enews/IAB/Website/Nielsen APAC Social Media Report-June2010.pdf
i don't see any souths forums there..
and there is a reason for that. when you refer to the souths supporter base being the largest one out there, this is only partially correct.
the real fact is that there is a much larger supporter base out there - the supporters of rugby league. this is the overall target market for this forum, attracting supporters of all different clubs and hence creating a wider user base from which to drive members and forum views.
and of course, these forum views are the true driver of revenue (the whole business sense bit) for the forum. there are no membership fees to join this forum & it's free for all to use, so if any souths fans are driven away, it's not like there is revenue lost there.
and what of the
lol@souffs threads. are they bad for business?
the 4
lol@souffs threads to date have seen nearly 12,000 posts (nearly enough to be a home crowd for a souths game) and over 200,000 views (which is actually more than the entire yearly attendance for souths in 2011).
so more people have been here to have a
lol@souffs than have attended their home games live to support them.
and these 200,000+ views go into the total forum views, which are the figures that any advertiser would be keen to understand before they invest in this forum - hence higher views can lead to greater advertising revenue.
i think you'll find that the only reason this doesn't appear to make 'good business sesnse' is that it is using a different business model to what you would use.
your call to make this forum more souths friendly would actually go against any solid business sense as you are asking the owners to move to a niche marketing strategy if you want them to soley appeal to the souths supporter base. you are asking them to appeal to a minor segment of the total market (clearly no more than a 10% of the total market at best) and hope that the remaining 90% decide this is okay for them too.
the rules of business state that you should go for the market which can provide you with the highest possible return for the smallest possible outlay, and to date i'd make the call that this forum is doing pretty well at that.
can 'the other forums' lay claim to that?
so, with that in mind, i can provide a factual & serious
lol@souffs.
