[Controversial] Don't start on forums

[Stojan Tim]

this is the problem faced by "Skiology." 40,000 FB members, zero ad revenue, no SEO.

Well there's a great reason to think carefully before jumping ship to Facebook. 40k members (I assume a Facebook group?) and no ad income from it

 

[zappaDPJ]

Why not transition to forums once you have a clear need for an owned platform?

The main issue I'd have with that is you can't take your content to the new platform.

 

[TriciaPug]

From an SEO POV, having your own forum, or at least some way of having content ON YOUR OWN DOMAIN is key.

TriciaPug this is the problem faced by "Skiology." 40,000 FB members, zero ad revenue, no SEO. The admin wants to make the jump to his own site, but I am guessing he knows he'll never retain those members.

Well there's a great reason to think carefully before jumping ship to Facebook. 40k members (I assume a Facebook group?) and no ad income from it

The main issue I'd have with that is you can't take your content to the new platform.

All of this is good reason to not use some of the platforms described for groups.
Benefits of having your own platform include (but not exclusive to...)

• You can have better control over the tone and member content
• You can monitize it. Using FB or Reddit only benefits them financially
• You can build upon it with your own vision(we had a software enginer build out an article and ski review add on, based on our vision)
• When you're using someone elses platform, they control how you can use the software.
• Having your own site/platform makes the content more searchable, and archiveable.

 

[sactown]

Well there's a great reason to think carefully before jumping ship to Facebook. 40k members (I assume a Facebook group?) and no ad income from it

Of course there is income

….for Zuckerberg