[quote AMemeByAnyOtherName]@DeRigueurMortis thanks for all the suggestions. Regarding the advertising, there is actually a lot of money in black haircare. Targeted advertising in areas discussing haircare could turn out to be highly profitable for MN. [/quote]
My intent is simply to be supportive and I agree that there is significant potential for such an area of the site to generate additional revenue.
What's important though is that word potential.
You'll only attract advertisers to a specific topic spending at profitable levels once you have a stable and proven user base who drive content (threads and posts) and page views in terms of lurkers viewing but not contributing.
You first have to hit a critical mass to do this - something that will take longer (and may not happen at all) if you dilute the topic in the first place.
In 2018 Mumsnet had 1.3 billion page views from 119 million unique users.
My understanding is the vast majority of that traffic and user content generation is directed to the "big hitting" topics - so AIBU/Chat/FWR/Style and Beauty.
Let's put that in context - between this thread and the one in Site Stuff we are getting towards 1500 posts.
These do not equate to users as some posters have made more than one comment both threads (in fact some users have made many, many posts on both threads).
So let's theorise that this means this subject has probably attracted (from 119 million users) 750 unique users from the MN community (though I think that's possibly over generous).
Of that, a substantial number of posts are from non black users - either supporting the concept or otherwise. Let say around 200? These users would presumably not be generating content on the new sections or driving page views.
So we are left with circa 550 users who we then have to assume support the idea but would also be committed to generating user content that would be varied and interesting enough to attract page views from additional and new users.
Now 550 might sound like a lot but it's not really, especially if their content is diluted over multiple sub sections.
They'd have to be super active (unprecedentedly so) to generate anywhere near the page views to make a credible vehicle for advertisers in and of itself over an umbrella topic.
That's why I'd strongly suggest a single topic that can grow organically, be monitored and a case made for subs based on actual data and user behaviour within that topic.
Another point to make in purely a business capacity is that this request is very much a Black rather than BAME topic.
I make no judgement on that but would point out that it sets a precedent that any other race/ethnicity should be able to demand the same.
As such when asking for this umbrella topic it's not as simple as saying we want 7 (or any other number) subs. The standard has been set for that times however many other such requests are made - that could be tens or hundreds of additional topics, each of which cost money to run and for which there is no real understanding of the financial benefit they might provide.
I'm sorry if I'm sounding negative - I'm not trying to be in the sense I'm supportive of the idea and hope the request for a Black topic is granted and is successful.
What I'm trying to do is offer a level of realism and advice on how that might best be achieved - which I think is to start with a single black topic, encourage as many users as you can to post there and grow it organically.