I basically have access to the “two people” from every theatre. My difficulty so far has been that every “two people” want different things. We’re working to try and find matches, where a niche site shares information across needs-based groups. And, of course, the idea is to make it loose enough that those groups can create their own lines of communication for sharing within the network.

This isn’t rocket science – there’s no mystery, it’s just a matter of inspiration.

It sounds like you’ve got a lot of experience in this area. Do you have any concrete advice for Eric or for folks in similar situations?

I don’t wish to be harsh, but if that’s considered insightful, I really must re-calibrate my instruments. If you hadn’t had this revelation before, then no wonder you were finding it hard going!

We’ve been developing our social garden tracking site (MyFolia.com) for the last 10 months, and in many ways being stereotyped into a “niche social network” has been great for picking up a bit of tech press, but has been a bit of a hinderance to encourage the people that will actually use and appreciate our site – gardeners.

I think one of the reasons why we have been successful at getting lots of great word of mouth across blogs and forums is that our offering isn’t just an empty social network – at its heart there are real tools and features that are designed specifically for gardeners – tools and features that gardeners actually want.

We are trying to use social software (profiling and talk groups) and collaborative tools (wikis and observation journals) to solve some real problems for gardeners (how long does tomato really take to germinate? does it really grow well in my area?) This is what attracts our users as they can see a definite pay off to joining and contributing – they become better gardeners as they learn from others in similar situations to themselves, and likewise their own experiences feed into the system for others to learn from.

I think it’s a good thing that most web users that are joining niche networks aren’t tech savvy as they are less likely to get influenced by the “latest and greatest” – they know what they want and what is a waste of their time. In the end they will vote with their feet, and the sites that provide a true service will shine through.

Then, perhaps the site could offer to sell tickets on their behalf, funneling proceeds to a PayPal account or something, taking a small percentage in fees. Or it could offer a classified service, where directors can, for a small fee, post audition notices for upcoming shows, in hopes of reaching a greater variety of actors. On the flipside, perhaps actors would be willing to subscribe to a premium service, where their profile information is available, searchable or even automatically delivered to directors when new shows are coming. Maybe up and coming playwrights would be interested in paying a fee to have their work promoted to directors looking for new ideas. And, of course, local theaters themselves would likely be interested in advertising to such a targeted group of users.

I’m not part of any community theater group, so I don’t know if any of those are valid for that niche, but those are the types of things I’d look into, and I think it illustrates one way of approaching funding for a niche site: cater to the common need, while providing premium benefits.

The one other piece of advice I’d offer is to pick a set of features that the site is mainly focused on, and make yourself a promise that those features will always be available, and they’ll always be free. Then supplement them with additional features that may or may not cost, but make sure the core features of the site, the main goal it was built for, remains free. Nobody likes using a site for a while, then suddenly realizing that it’s a subscription service, or that the feature they’ve been enjoying suddenly has transaction fees.

And, of course, while I’ve done a good deal of thinking about how a niche site should operate, I have yet to actually get mine off the ground, so all of this is untested in the real world. Take it with a grain of salt. And maybe some pepper.