How would you start to market a forum?

I am in the process of starting up a Fantasy Football Forum website and with luck, I should have it finished in 2 weeks time. (second site in signature).

As my first website (also undergong a total revamp) already has ready made traffic as its much older and has a PR4 ranking, trying to find traffic has not been as issue.

With the football season almost over, it gives me 3 months to start building traffic to the football forum.

If there were 5 steps you would take, what would you do?

Should I try and drive traffic to thefantasyfootballforum.com or thefantasyfootballforum.com/forum?

I have thought about buying something like submiteaze to help speed up the process of search engine and directory submissions?

Your thoughts and suggestions much appreciated...

 

Just send them directly to the .com if it is the same as the /forum page. In my opinion this is cleaner. Make sure you let people know if it is football or soccer your page is about, especially if you plan on doing paid search.

 

First, I would get some paid posters to start off the forum so you can get real new members (no one wants to join an empty forum...)

 

Thanks for the helpful advice so far.

Should I use submiteaze or is there something better out there for doing the job?

I will be looking to do some link exchanges soon.

Any other advice welcome. Thanks

 

2 things.

* It's soccer. :;

* You have 30 sub-forums. Cut it down to 5 or less. You can always expand later. Do you really need 9 different General sub-forums?

 

My thinking behind the other forums, if they fail to get any threads, I can always delete them and add others?

Appreciate your suggestion, something to bear in mind. Thanks

PS I have added (soccer) to my signature incase anyone gets confused.

 

Make sure you get some post in there that make people angry. Piss them off, and force them to join and reply.

For example we all know soccer sucks, and is no way nearly exciting as the NFL.

 

Indeed, but make well sure that Americans know what the difference is, unless thats what your intended audience is. Just trying to keep your bounce rate low.

 

I would drive traffic to the .com not the .com/forum , I had several of my directory submits turned down because it was a sub domain.

I do think the name will be confused for Americans and even some parts of the rest of the world. NFL is not just broadcast in the United States and I think you may well have a lot of people thinking your site is a NFL Footbal site. That was my first thought until I read through the post. JMO

 

Thanks for all your suggestions, they have been very helpful.

 

Get threads and then market - the rest will come depending on how many people are interested in your topic.

 

I disagree with that as most of the world call soccer "football" some parts "futboll" since it is the worlds most popular sport and mostly everyone calls it football so the only people that will get confused are in the U.S

 

Very true, all we are saying is make the distinction if paid advertising is done in the US.

 

Yeah, paid posts are the way to go!

 

Hehe, interesting tactic, but i think it will work for this niche

You can also try posting to forums of different teams like using bad words about team X on team X's forum

 

i feel terrible that the admin some times dont pay $$. so i think its no use.perhaps you can try it.