Hey guys, Please help me out with my new investment forum, Berkshire Hathaway Forum. I think my forum is doing pretty well so far considering it's only a few weeks old, but I've pretty much exhausted my previous methods for driving traffic (basically posting my URL on various finance message boards and telling friends) and want to continue the momentum. I've noticed that my previous methods, which include a Berkshire Hathaway Forum Facebook group (join the group, we need members!) have gained us some decent traffic, but very limited members and even more limited members that actually post. Maybe this is typical of most forums, but the percentage of traffic that actually logs in and posts something is very small. Most traffic is just there to browse. The membership is fairly clean. For the first several I didn't think to screen them for spamming unless their usernames were really obvious, but now I screen all usernames, emails and IP addresses. My goal is to create a forum for investors with above average know how to post and exchange ideas with one another. The forum does focus on the niche of Berkshire Hathaway, value investing and all things related to Warren Buffett, but the more time you spend thinking about investing, the more you realize that Buffett is central to all investing.
It takes time to develop a forum site. You should be patient about its growth. Don't rush anything. Continue posting quality topics and information. Give incentives to your faithful members like free blog or free domain name. Do some SEO stuff. Traffic from Google is wholesome.
Like Bohol said...it just takes time...I think a forum is the HARDEST thing there is to start. I started my forums August 20 of last year and have 829 members and over 17k posts to date. I have bought tons of ads on Adwords and Adbrite and hired forum posters in the beginning. I purchased signature links on other forums that have the same niche as mine. I have run numerous contests on the forum as well. I do not think there is one single that makes it work, it takes a bunch of small things and keep plugging along and do not give up as most do. Good luck to you and your forum!
Also note that you don't have to follow their suggestions. The main thing is to just keep at it. I would highly advise a new style change. I dont think giving a free blog or domain to his target market is going to be worthwhile..
Thanks for all the positive words and encouragement. I had one problem where I was getting a lot less members than would be expected based on the amount of traffic I was getting. I just created a Members Only subforum where members exchange their best and newest investment ideas. Hopefully this will spur forum trollers to become members. I think the jump from guest to member is a big step. Once that happens, if your forum is half way decent it's only a matter of time before they start posting. In regards to changing the forum style, I'm completely color/style blind. Based on my personal experiences I always felt you could gain traffic/members with an awesome style, but you can't really lose with a boring style. Are there any forums that are particiularly famous for having good style/color schemes?
I suppose I am a little biased since I do web design. However, isn't missing the opportunity to gain members from the look of a site is a way of losing members so-to-speak? The term "boring style" is loosely defined because it is different from person to person. I think that a nice looking website can be a way to create an identity for your site which in turn could convert more members. There's no single solution to your problem, but aesthetics is something you should look into. If aesthetics weren't important to people, we all would be using text based computers? I'm no historian..
give your members some place for advertising as I am giving 300x250 box in my forum. 100 posts = 300x250 box for one month, I also allowed them to put adsense code up there or their affiliate code too hope I answered the question
You are absolutely right. I will look into more styles. I guess my biggest problem is that I'm pretty oblivious to the style issues. When looking at some of the skins they offer for phpbb, vbulletin, simple machines, i honestly think they look pretty simliar. Obviously, I'm the exception. Most web users do care, it's just not natural for me to think about it. Maybe I'll ask friends for ideas and inputs when I look at other skins.
Take into consideration your target market, will they need what you're giving them? Maybe a good place to start is creating a logo for your site, a mission statement, and some forum rules.
I thought I had a hard niche until I looked at yours. I'm having problems with getting new members also. It's not easy. I have done article submissions,directories submissions,blog comments and you name it. I'm on first page of Google for many keywords (#1-#5 many times). First page first place on MSN and still no members. I've also added the "limited guest viewing" mod. I'm getting on average 137 visit's a day(3452 last month). Try getting a ton of backlinks. Also offer an incentive for posts,threads and referals. Something that has to do with your niche like a book on Buffet or something. I give 1oz bullion to my members because that what my niche is. Don't give up it's going to take some time. Good luck.
I'm actually not sure who has the tougher niche. I would say though that this has, is and will be a "golden" era for your topic. Maybe you should clarify the purpose of your forum. I visited your site and checked out several pages on the site, but I couldn't figure out the purpose of the site. Maybe you can include a purpose statement, incorporate the world "gold" more often and decrease the number of subforums until you get more posts.
When we post on forums and include our website's URLs in signatures, does that help our page rank and SEO? If so, it seems like a no brainer that we should join each other's forums and post a couple messages (everyone has some questions regarding all types of topics) and then incorporating our website URLs in the signature.
One thing I noticed with your forum is that the skin has a bug with the width in that the skin extends beyond the browser width by like 35 pixels (estimate). That would definitely get on my nerves if I were a member.. It is odd that one one would spend a bunch of time at a different website than their own but I suppose that could be a strategy. With that in mind, one might want to hire buddies to protect the homeland.
I see what your talking about on the home page. Theres really nothing to see on the far right. Looking at threads is fine on width. Don't know how to fix the homepage.
I can't believe you couldn't figure out the purpose of my site. I've been thinking about making the welcome message unique. I admit I have a few too many sub-forums.