Is Making a Chat Room Pointless?

[DigitalJay]

It seems to be getting harder and harder to create a successful chatroom with repeat chatters. Has anyone here had any luck creating an adult gay chatroom? Since I keep reading that the longer someone is exposed to a banner or link the more likely it is that they will click on it, I want to know if it is still possible to create a gay room that men spend a lot of time in. Please leave a link to your chat room.

[Lee]

I wouldnt say it is pointless however, i would say it is creating more work for yourself.

By adding a chat room to any site you then need to start marketing not only your sponsors but also the chat room in order to get people using it. Just as if you were to add a forum you need to spend time promoting that to get people posting on it.

Regards,

Lee

[Chilihost]

if you run a club that is focused on dating or matchmaking then i reckon you would need a chat room. Plus it might be a good way to up your bookmarkers.

I have only ever built one site with a chat room and finding good software is hard or expensive.


cheers,

Luke

[Bec]

I think the chatroom idea only works if your site benefits from the time and effort of having one ... as Luke mentioned, something like a dating site. A site that is more for resources (like this one), then a message board makes a lot more sense... and not quite as time intensive.

[Bec]

Oh, the other place I'd use one, is if there was some sort of regularly scheduled "program" happening at a certain day and time ... like the aired show that max cash puts on ... you can hear the program and type in questions in the chat room at the same time. Same thing for a site doing live interviews of say an author or maybe a recording star, artist, etc.

[BDBionic]

I've thrown a discussion forum on to my free site. Posting activity isn't yet where I want it but I'm about to fire up some incentives to get people posting so that should change soon, I'm hoping.

I expected it to be a 6 month process getting it to a level of activity I'd be happy with because it takes awhile to not so much get porn surfers to want to start chattin about porn, but get the porn surfers who are the kinds that like chatting openly about it to find your site and start doing it. And then I expect it to be a case of exponential growth after that.

Right now threads that are posted are getting viewed hundreds and thousands of times, but with only a few replies. So most people are still choosing to remain an anonymous porn surfer. So I just have to make an effort to fire up the activity. If and when it takes off and becomes self sustaining? Could be a great asset to my site. Regular visitors. Regular feedback. Word of mouth traffic.