How to get a new forum moving ?

Hello,
I just created a new forum www.talkhobby.com where anything related to hobbies/recreation can be discussed.

Wondering how I can get users to register and post. Any suggestions please ?

Thank you.

 

From my personal experience it is all about content, hire forum posters to ask questions and others to answer. Not all visitors will register but as long as you have posts that are interesting to read people will continue to come back, once you have enough content and traffic you should start seeing new members and from there it should grow.

 

I'm in the same boat, I have just started droneforums[.]co[.]uk - starting a forum is probably the hardest thing in terms of web stuff. I've started creating topics relating to a blog I have, so new articles get a topic created on the forums (I know there is a comments section) but this seems to be working. Try using twitter, get a lot of interested followers and post links. Post some interesting topics in your forums, if your not posting there - why will anyone else? create some fake profiles and post there to make the forum look full. Do a competition for the first person with 50 useful posts - give like $50 amazon vouchers.

 

That's a great idea, it is ALL about CONTENT, CONTENT and more CONTENT! No matter if it is a blog, forum, video, podcast... post useful stuff and answer people's questions and people will keep coming back for more!

Heck, if you ever need a forum poster feel free to PM me and I'll be happy to help!!

Good luck!

 

How much do you charge for forum posting?

 

bulldogjjb, why dont we help each other ?

 

my idea is as new forum owner you should need email list that collection of people that trust you and what you offer,,promote among them 1t and spread word out of them...

 

Creating a forum from scratch is usually not a good idea if what you're after is members - better to already have a community (doesn't have to be YOUR community) / niche / something which is in need of a forum. Say, if you start a blog about something that might interest people, then you'll get people visiting your blog, and build up a reputation for good content over time. Then, maybe people want to be able to discuss further than the comments section, and you provide them a forum to do so. Starting with a forum (with nothing much else to offer) is normally not gonna work, as it's a hassle to get registered and if there's next to no content already, it's not worth it (shows lack of both content and participants - if I'm visiting a forum it's usually to ask a question, or inform others of something, and if there's noone around to answer or read what I post...)

 

Starting a brand new forum, which is just a forum can be very difficult.
In my opinion forums get a jump start when there is already a site which people visit for something interesting. Then you add a forum to the site and those same visitors will use the forum.

But because yours is a new forum which needs to pull in new visitors, then you must post some interesting articles, answers to questions which people have (about hobbies etc), and people will find it interesting to join , post their answers/experiences/questions etc.

You need to keep the forum active to retain previous visitors and also to pull in new ones.

Also in the beginning, you might want to allow posting links. That way webmasters who are in the same niche will make posts trying to get backlinks to their own websites.
You have to be careful and must remove spam on a regular basis though.

To avoid autoposting bots, you might want to activate human verification, but make sure that the image is not too difficult to read or you might lose some real and quality visitors.

You can also motivate webmasters to make posts on your forums by allowing signature links.
Think of more ways to motivate people to post on your forums other than paying for forum posts.

Good luck with the project

 

Forums are not a normal website. A normal website is one where the site provides the content and the users browse. Forums are different, you need members to create the content, you need content to attract members, its a cycle that can be next to impossible to jump start. The worse thing about forums, is that with a standard site, you can control all of the content, and place relevant ads to the content. A standard site might see you managing it just once a week to add new content. Hell, some of my sites I ignore for months on end.
With forums, you have less control over the content, and are required to police it. Forums attract spammers, (think links to porn, viagra etc), if you have advertisers you must police your content vigilantly to maintain a quality forum. You will have to work daily on your forum. Starts out fun, but trust me, in 6months, 1 year, 2 years, if its earning little you will be sick of it. Even if you dont have advertisers, once a forum is run into the ground by spammers, the good members leave.

A number of new forums have started, and one thing that many have done is use postloop which will see a stream of users signup and start posting. This way if you attract a few users through marketing, at least they can see some posts, members, and see some activity. The thing is, you need alot of money to do continuous advertising. The ROI will likely be zero but the aim is to gain members. You need deep pockets to keep paying for members, and content, while advertising to attract real users. Like right now, we can see an empty forum, perhaps if it had some members, and posts you might have had a few people browsing your forums.
I have had a forum before, and (dont quote me on this) but it might be something like for every 100 site visitors, that 1 becomes a member, for every 10 members, 1 becomes a good poster, for every 100 members, 1 becomes a regular (heavy) forum user. So once you have a forum with alot of good content and postloop users, getting a gradual 10k highly targeted site users over a few months might get you 10 really good, long term forum members.

What has happened to many many forums, is that once they run out of money for the paid members / posts, the forum instantly dies. Any marketing efforts then just fail miserably as the forum is dead. The people who were being paid dont want to work for free. In the last few years, i have seen many forums start and fail. I have not personally seen one start and succeed.
Based on your choice of free theme, and free forum software, I doubt you will still be around in 2016. But you are welcome to prove me wrong.

Goodluck.

 

Jeet and matt_62 : A biiiig thank you for your valuable inputs. I do appreciate your initiative to enlighten. It would be even better if you could come and join talkhobby.com with your insights and I will definitely keep responding to your posts. Though you are not helping me for money, but I would like to mention that forum moderators will share the forum revenue, if it takes off. Thank you once again

 

I know I'm the latecomer to this, but I've also been working on building a forum up. I'd be more than happy to swap out helping each other if you're interested.

 

Of course I am interested. What is your forum about ?

 

My forum is about real estate investing. I've also got free extra material as a bonus for joining. i'm building it myself so it might not look super pretty just yet. it's at http://www.richertimes.com and I'll go join yours too.

 

Nice to see such positive teamwork going on in here!!

OP, your site is about hobbies so I would consider investing time in the future to make it look more hobby-like, perhaps a bit more colorful, with a logo that reflects more of what the forum is about. But so far, you have active threads and things are getting going. Continued good luck to you!

 

Thanks buddy. The logo "Dripped Ink" is symbolic to "writing it out"

Collins, you can find my forum at www.talkhobby.com

 

I already signed up at yours and made a post in the books section.

 

I had many struggles in creating my forum but now after two years it is really a great place with everyday new members.
The best advice is ever got was from @digitalpoint.
What does your site offer in comparising to other sites?
What makes you unique? Every day i think at these words and create stuff that nobody offers. Thanks Shawn!

 

Thanks a lot robby. This is what I am considering at the moment.