Darren Rowse, the genius behind the popular blog Problogger has already launched the forum which is more known as the Problogger Community. Although he hasn’t yet made a formal announcement of it in his blog, the community is rapidly growing already with over 3000 members on board . Some of the prominent figures I’ve seen there are the likes of Daniel Scocco (DailyBlogTips), Jim Kukral (JimKukral.com), David Risley (DavidRisley.com) and more.
Although there is no scarcity in blogging forums, the Problogger Community is still expected to surpass all other forums and get to the top in no time. Registration is NOT free but at $1.95, heck it’s a bargain. According to most, this registration fee exists to filter out spammers. The price is set to increase soon so if you’re planning to register then the best time to do it is now.
The forum is going to be big soon and there’s no doubt about it. But on whether it can be different on other blogging forums remains to be unseen. I have been doing some detective works and observing the forums. To be honest, the forum is really good because there aren’t so many categories yet it’s not lacking anything it seems. But still I am seeing a lot of reasons why this forum can be just your another average blogging forum and here are the reasons:
- Experts Are NOT going to lurk there – The main selling point of the forum I believe is that it’s packed with several authorities in the niche. While it can really be exciting (and astounding), it’s still the fact that these bloggers won’t devote 10% of their time in that forum. I mean these bloggers are business guys and they are busy for most part of the day so I don’t see any reason for them to lurk over there. And if I’m correct, then the main selling point is canceled out already.
- New Forum, Same Mindset – People who go to forums usually just go there to make promotions and marketing, both direct and indirect (debatable). Aside from its a paid membership, there is really no difference between it and other blogging forums. The rules are kinda the same. You still see people drop gazillion of links (like me, or Im just joking!), see annoying members, and see a lot of blog critiques with less than 2 critiques! The forums shows leniency and in my opinion I think it needs to be more strict.
- Lurking is Bad – Like what I’ve talked here in the blog about lurking on forums, I think it can still harm people’s productivity. Most bloggers love to lurk and waste their time lurking. Im sure they enjoy it but since they joined the Problogger Community, then I’m assuming they want to be a professional blogger. And hurting your productivity doesn’t help to become a Pro Blogger.
- Getting Bigger – Theoretically there’s nothing wrong on having a large forums, but I always prefer smaller forums. Why? Because a smaller forum can give you a tighter community where everyone really gets to maximize every benefit they could ever gain. It builds better relationship amongst bloggers and it can really help benefit everyone. Digital Point Forums and Warrior Forum used to be a good forum and it only gets out of hand when it became highly populated. You can post a thread asking for something and in the next 20 minutes your thread is already on the third page w/no replies. Big is good, but toooo big is not!
I don’t have anything against the new community. If I have, then why would I join? Why would I care about writing this post? It’s a good forum that can be a future source of awesome content to the right person. But as far as seeing the difference of it to other blogging or webmaster-related forums, I don’t see much. I may be correct and I may not be. And someone can prove me wrong here.