I left the New York Times to start MadMariner.com, an online boating magazine. To date, the site overall is doing pretty well. We publish a story a day and our stuff is getting read. But “community” is another matter.

I had 70K unique visitors in August, but most bypassed the forums altogether, thanks to the chicken-and-egg equation we all know so well: you need people to participate in order to get people to participate.

“Seeding” forums with active posters from other sites is a good idea, but it is also no small task. Most communities won’t tolerate being poached, and rightly so. So the appeal must be made individually, one-on-one. That takes time. Just getting good contact information can be a real effort. I find myself running people down the way I used to chase sources on a story involving DeLay or Abramoff – a lot of work for one would-be convert.

There’s also a fair amount of promotion that goes into this line of work – more than one would be comfortable with in a traditional newsroom. We all know those reporters who are good at touting their stuff. But promoting a site requires a far more brazen approach, both online and offline. Many of my reporter colleagues would not be comfortable doing this.

There is also a lot of competition in the arena of user-generated content, mostly from early adaptors who have been building forum traffic – and little else – for years. From a journalistic standpoint, there are not a ton of sites doing what MadMariner does. But there are a handful of GREAT forum sites. How to compete?

Of course, we have only been actively publishing for a few months, and the truth is that I have yet to turn my full attention to forums. When I do, I expect they will improve. But anybody considering a publishing venture or a community site should not underestimate this kind of work. It is a lot of fun and (at least for a print guy) it stretches new muscles, but it is a challenge.