I made a new forum site fresh born in the last 5 mins. No content besides site description and forum and subforum description. What will I do to increase the traffic? Do I spam?
I have the same question in mind. How can we promote a site on forums wihtout being considered as spammer ? Well, probably it depends from forum to forum. In the case of digital point, the policy seems to be a bit less strict. This is from the forum rules: Yoel
You promote forum like you promote any site. Just try to get traffic. people in same interest will lurk on that forum. You could also try to "invite" spammers by letting them post to the "classified ads" section. If you are in a small niche, you will have quite a community. It would be better if you already have a small group of 5 - 10 people or friends, who consistently discuss things and keep the forum "alive".
If you choose the path of spam... you end up having SPAM - not traffic. For traffic, do something like this: - develop a daily plan (write posts by yourself) - get friends to discuss with stuff - make a contest (I always suggest "free beer", that ought to get people's attention ) - have only a few subforums in the beginning, make more later (perhaps) - check out how the big names do it... learn from them (search these forums, google for how to build forums) - forget 5 min perspective, and take a 5 year perspective
I'm a strong believer in karma and, thus, also believe that if you're spamming to make money, you'll recieve the same negativity and frustration that receivers of spam feel - except you'll get it in another way. But hey! It's up to you, my friend. My advice? Is this website in a market you know and love? If so, go to: http://www.big-boards.com/ and find the best forums in your market. Then start networking, posting helpful comments and starting your own threads to get some buzz going. Then people will be more likely to click your forum sig. Good luck. Scotty
after you make some interesting posts in your forum you can so some seo ,you can use also banner exchange with other adult forums .
Don't ever spam. Because if you do, some one will complain to your host. And get your forum shut down. Or your IP address black listed. Instead, here is a strategy that works with forums: 1. When you're starting out, have very few forum categories and sub categories. Just 2-3 are good enough. The fewer the categories you have, the faster the momentum will build. 2. Think about investing in a script that scraps content from sites like Yahoo answers. People will think that your site is popular - even though most of the initial posts will be from yahoo.com 3. I've been a moderator on 2 forums. And I can tell you this: one of the forums just has 20 regular posters. Yet - it gets about 300 new posts per week. That generates a lot of traffic from search engines. So: focus on building a relationship with your early members. You just need 20-30 regular posters to make your forum a success. 4. Think about revenue sharing. Can you share google adsense revenue with the posters? If yes - you will attract a lot more people. 5. Think of starting an affiliate program. And pay $1 per referral to your affiliates. Condition being: the new member has to make 5 posts before the $1 is paid. This will get a lot of people to promote your forum.
My suggestion would be to start looking in the Directory area of DigitalPoint. There are always posts about posting for free to someones directory. Once you have done that, you can build up your posts on DigitalPoint and then put your forum in your signature. You may also look in the section about Link Exchanges to find people with similar sites. Pretty much all the answers to your questions can be found on DigitalPoint, just search around.
Im planning to jumpstart it by emailing some 1000 people from same group but i think its not a good idea
As Ankesh said, if you don't have the permission you shouldnt do that, it's unethical and illegal. There're lots of ways to promote a forum. The first thing you'll need is quality content, something to offer to your users. Start a few topics and try to encourage people to post. You can also submit your link to directories. Post in forums similar to yours, if they allow to add links in your signature, add yours. Also, in some forums you can post your own site (without spamming, just for review or promotion), post there too. If you have money to spend, you could also try to hire some paid posters, but keep in mind that you have to offer quality content if you want your forum to be interesting. Also you could start a contest, maybe giving out something related to your forum's topic... As you can see, there are several and better alternatives to spamming.
You could always hire some paid posters to get things started in the forum. Like, for 1 week, spend $25 a day to hire 5 people to post 100 posts for $0.05, after 1 week, start networking your site to other large forums in your niche. Use http://www.bigboards.net for that. People will come to your site and finish the discussions left by the paid posters and natural discussion will spark.
You trying to poison your baby site with spam! Suggest you start using all techniques other peoples are using.
spamming only brings spamming back to you network with peopl you know to post 10 things each then it will build from there
that makes sense. Promote a site that has NOTHING to offer the visitor. I;d come back daily to read nothing..