South East Jap Car Club
 

This is something I've been wanting to do for a while now so any advice is grateful. Please do not think I am taking members away from here.

As there's a southern scoob club I was thinking of making a jap car club. To be honest it would be similar to this club, in other words we wouldn't have weekly meets at mcds buy rather monthly meets at pubs and stuff.

Obviously the club would be directed to Japanese cars in the south east, would have a forum, memeberships etc.

Just an idea really as I dont know of any big south jap clubs? Just wondered if anyone would have any input? Negative or positive.

I think there are other ones around.

If you fancy doing your own club then fair enough but personally don't think its very fair talking about setting up another site on here imho.
You did day you didn't mind the negative

As above, there are already a few jap forums in the SE

Feel free to give it a go, but you might find there is so much work involved you loose the fun side of it yourself.

That's fine I want peoples opinions. I seem to like asking for advice on here for some reason just dont want to upset or offend anyone by asking this. Just looking for people's opinions.

People can be members of more than one club and I'm sure most members on here are hence why I didn't think it would be a problem to ask on here. I'm not advertising a club, just asking about it.

Plus I've seen old posts of sussex scoobies advertising on here before.

Yeah thats what I like though, the challenge and organsing lol.

There's a fair amount involved and the hardest bit is getting people to the meets and getting the forum up and running taken seriously, which also costs.

There have been a few attempts over the years but somehow 'mixed marque' car clubs seem to struggle. I think people with subaru's, evo's, M3's etc tend to want to be more involved with forums that are more specific to their own car as the forums prove useful for advice and everyone has one thing in common - their car.

Again, just an opinion, but if you fancy it, give it a go.

I have to agree :whistle:

Over the years there have been loads, trust me I've looked. Google it and you'll see mate. You'll also see that the vast majority are now shut down or not been posted on for years. It's a very narrow 'market', for lack of better word, now than it was 10 years ago when the Yen was cheap against the pound and there were Jap cars everywhere. Not trying to put you off, far from it, I would only try encourage fellow enthusiasts or at worst be honest with them but to say you're up against it is a massive MASSIVE understatement.

Then there's the fact that a site/forum is only as good as its members. On here, and other well known sites, we have people who have been there done it all twice or more. It's a vault of knowledge all things Impreza as well as being a great little community. It takes a long time to build that and to be honest, why would people stick around waiting for it to happen elsewhere when there's already so many other sites they can join and get what ever it is they need?! So therefore to get the audience you would like/require, you would have to come up with something we can't get elsewhere. Sorry to say mate but good luck with that...

Right, here's my view on it...

- If you're not well established and well known in the community, you've no hope getting something off the ground (just being straight with you).
- What can you offer that other clubs can't?
- It costs money to setup a forum. Hosting will be at least £80-100 a year for a basic package that allows MySQL databases, plus vBulletin isn't cheap (yes, there are free forum packages out there but they're not as nice and streamlined imo). You'll need someone at least semi-IT savvy to setup and manage either choice.
- Memberships to raise money won't work. A forum has to be free for people to be interested. Nobody will pay money for something when there's something better available for free elsewhere.
- Many people ahead of you have tried and failed. People who have been around the Subaru/Jap scene for many years (even decades). To be frank, plenty of us have seen it all before, it normally ends up with nobody posting on the new forum and the owner wondering why they bothered spending any money on it in the first place....

+1.
Especially on the basis that you'd be primarily trying to recruit members from SES, I expect :whistle:

See thats all I needed some advice and to be honest now I've read all this and realised perhaps to stay clear of doing it :).