is marketing for an online forum worth it?

well i have an online forum for penn state students, and its been stagnant lately, i haven't done any types of marketing of late and that is why. anyway i was thiking of using adwords to market it. but i'm wondering ... will this just be a waste of money? or is it worth advertising an online forum?

 

using adwords is very expensive, if u are not sure you will earn money from it
u can try some free SEO

 

more on free SEO?? how can i do this?

 

I don't think PPC would be worth it if you don't already have an active member base. What you should try is try some offline marketing at the university etc.

 

yea i've tried that .. theres not many methods of doing it tho

 

Have you tried Facebook advertising? Can target your potential visitors well with that. Hope it helps

 

Before you go to adwords you can try SEO from experts.
SEO and social networking will surely help you to get your desire results in internet marketing.And it will cost you far less then adwords.

 

could u tell me more about how seo can help? evertime i search for penn state forums .. or psu forums its one of the top ones, so how else could it help? thats something that confuses me

 

Try to choose another keywords if you are in search engines tops with keyword you using now, maybe it will bring you more traffic.

To choose the best keywords for your niche is one of the most important things in the beginning of your SEO works.

 

Having a forum and keeping it alive takes a lot of hard work and time. You shouldn't spend money on it at the beginning. Try with some friends to help you make content and that put your links everywhere and try with some social (bookmarking) sites to gain traffic and new users.