Author Topic: Want to start up an online community with potential Mobile App  (Read 1465 times)

deek

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I have been developing some ideas regarding setting up a community for a fast growing industry that hasn't gained tons of popularity yet. It's a pretty specific niche, but with time I think the reach could be great. I think this has potential to attract attention from different brands that are associated with this niche.

Would it be best to reserve a domain until I know exactly how I want it set up? And at what point would a simple mobile app be necessary? Would that come after the forum/community grows?

I'm not all that organized yet, and just want to focus on putting out content, content, and more content.

Do my fellow entrepreneurs have any recommendations on executing this plan?

CareCPA

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Re: Want to start up an online community with potential Mobile App
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2017, 09:15:05 AM »
I can't speak to the mobile app, but if the domain you want is available, then I would advise grabbing it. It could still be there by the time you're ready. but the annual fee is cheap insurance to get the one you want.

deek

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Re: Want to start up an online community with potential Mobile App
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2017, 10:14:38 AM »
I'm trying to weigh the pros/cons of starting a community vs. being a voice for the existing communities and letting everyone come to me because of the quality of my content that I'm putting out.

neo von retorch

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Re: Want to start up an online community with potential Mobile App
« Reply #3 on: April 06, 2017, 07:20:04 AM »
Would it be best to reserve a domain until I know exactly how I want it set up? And at what point would a simple mobile app be necessary? Would that come after the forum/community grows?

If the domain name is really key, sure, reserve it early. How do you know how key it is? (Market research? SEO?)

Do you need a mobile app? For what purpose? People actually are pretty slow to adopt mobile apps. As much as mobile phone use is up, they are still mostly happy to use (well-designed) web sites. So design your web site with mobile use in mind, and you will likely never need a mobile app, which introduces a slew of issues. (Native, bridge or HTML5 app? iOS or Android or both? Getting through each app store approval process. Keeping both apps updates and consistent with each other. Etc.) So save yourself and just do your web site the right way from the beginning. Also research "single page application" aka SPA - you can make a web site do a lot of things you'd want an app for - notifications, fast/slick UI, store data locally and sync with a server.

 

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