One of the benefits of being a forum admin
 

So, I run four communities of various size, all out of my own pocket and without advertising etc.

There was a knock on my door on Wednesday. A package arrived from the colonies containing something that looks rather like this. (That's about a Meg in size for those on dialup).

That's from members of two of the forums I run. Nice to be appreciated.

Rapscallion

Lucky you!
some receive death threats, booby-traps, pictures of their grandmas & pets kidnapped, etc...

Keep on the track ;)

Pretty awesome thing to get.

I usually get some free stuff sent my way to, or sometimes people will give me their premium memberships for free just for helping out or whatever :D

Wow, my members just keep nagging.

To me, one of the major benefits of running a forum is making new friends. Since my forum is local, I have actually met most of the members. Quiet a few of them have known me for almost a decade. LOL

Like this is my new Friend ;) https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/

Heh - I have to travel to Canadalandialand for my meetings... I have a nasty habit of failing to learn to ski.

Rapscallion

I think when you have a successfull community. The starting off is the hardest bit, hence the reason many admins fail and just give up. If you stick in there, and be patient -- then that its self is rewarding. Although it's a lot more expensive :p

Yep, my first forum took 3 years to gain 100 members and 10,000 posts. But, we're now the 2nd most popular forum in our niche. My second forum, which I started in late Feb, took less than 2 months to get there. It's pretty depressing when you have an empty forum, tried everything, and still nothing comes to fruition. I've been there, it's not a good feeling.

I know how you feel i waited a long time to get where i am 6 months 40 members to visit and come online in aday . Then i see this new forum of the same genre start and have 60 i wanted to give up.

4 months and I hit 250 members. If you understand SEO, you can get your site members, quicker!

Using SEO to get members quicker is all up to interpretation. Not everyone believes it makes as much of a difference as other ways do.

Yep, SEO can only get you so far. The new forum I'm starting is less than 2 months old, but with 134 members and 10k+ posts. I haven't even gotten to the SEO part on that forum yet.

I' dont know what SEO is?

However, all that being the forum admin has gotten me is a few other pissed off forum admins from boards members leave just to come to mine

I dont even get to participate in our hosts free gear give away :(

mine bought me a 500gb external drive.

Well obviously SEO can only get you so far. It takes time, patience and hardwork to get a successful community. There are a lot of things I could go into, but I really don't have the time too.

What their loss; is your gain. To be honest, I wouldn't care what other admins think about me. You are in the same niche, competing -- don't let them put you down -- just because their board is a failure.

We're are slowly approaching our fifth year. At five years we have a little over 300 members and 110,000 posts.

May be a lot , may not be. But I'm very happy with the size of my forums. My forum members paid for my vb license when we decided to change from phpBB to vb in the middle of last year.

My site is almost eight years old, and my forums close to seven... started with UBB, upgraded to vBulletin the year after, and stuck with it until now. Throughout the years I've experienced a plethora of reactions from my members, from intense adoration, to grateful appreciation, to extreme loathing, and even experienced a time when a whole group of people left en masse because of politics and drama...

I've gotten several things, from t-shirts and caps, to gift certificates, to personal checks from donating members. The good times were really good, and the bad times always threatened to convince me to pass the admin chores to someone else (more so before than now). But apart from ego, it feels good to have a sense of leadership when you're a forum admin. Makes you feel like you're their big brother (in more ways than one).

It's a thankless job most of the time (my moderators can attest to that), but getting what the OP got is one of the things that make it worthwhile....

- T

My members don't complain because there's no rules except for the legal stuff. But over the years i've sent & received stuff from my internet friends. :)

Seen this thread for a week now...

still can't come up with an answer for it.