Promoting a forum is one of the toughest and time taking job. There are several ways to promote & get traffic to a forum: 1)- Purchase banner advertising with off course some incentives on a good looking banner 2)- Start contests to attract visitors 3)- Good SEO always helps 4)- Signature links & Avatars are a good way of promotion
Lately everyone that is entering that type of contests are there only for the prize not really care about the forum itself. Another thing make couple of good sticky topics so they eventually attrackt some attention to the boards.
Yep, I agree but if there is no activity on forum, no one will join and you can get activity either via paid posting or contests. Once you have few hundred regular members, then your forum is on a go
You could always use adwords or paid advertising to entice people to come to your site. There are thousands of forums and the last thing any one wants is another login to another forum. To kick start a forum, I suggest focusing on creating a community - a reason for people to come together, a short coming of current offerings before throwing money on adwords or banners. If you provide a reason for a community to come together based on your sites value proposition, people will come. You got to have a site that has 200+ visitors a day before adding a forum, in my opinion. Once you get this going adding incentives, banners and paid traffic all help along with SEO.
I cant own adsense they still never approve me... but seriously speaking... i dont ask forfun to promote idea of my site.... i really need someone whom able to help me.
I think the best thing you could do to promote it is sign up at groups about anime (assuming you mean the forum in your sig), become friends with other people that are into it and it will automatically gain popularity.