How to get traffic for a new forum?

my new webmaster forum will be launched soon,
this is my first vbulletin forum,
please share your personal experience and methods.
thanks.

 

Google Adsense but its expensive.

Can also put a sig in your profile and post good articles at places.

 

Create new, unique, interesting articles and submit to sites like Digg etc. If you offer something valuable from your community, you should draw attention and gain members in time. Be patient though!

Meti

 

great, just like submit blog posts to Digg and delicious.
i might consider to advertise on other websites once it gets a certain members and content.

 

Sign up in a Good forums like DP and Add a signature (Name of your new forum) and then start promoting. Give valuable suggestion to other forums members, become popular and u will see more people are visiting your sites and forums

 

Try some contests on your forum, like posting or reffering contest etc....

 

Be careful while promoting though social bookmarking sites. They are not cracking down on exchanges and sites that are overly promoting though their services. Certainly give the options to your members to do things, but do not overly push the notion of doing them.

If you have a site already going and are adding in a forum, you could possibly get away with putting out a press release on a few sites.

You may also enjoy buying sig links on various competing forums. The members on the other forums that see the sig may be interested, as they are already forum members. This works especially well if you have rev sharing or other perks for members. Advertising directly on webmaster sites works similar to sig links, you can put your ad on DP through this link: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/advertising.php

And in the case of webmaster sites, directories work well...as about the only people that use directories these days are fellow webmasters.

 

Webmaster and technology forums are terribly hard to start, there are so many of them.

I have www.computalk.net which is fairly new but you need to spend lots and advertise lots to get ANYONE to post.

 

start by submitting to directories & some social bookmarking websites, then look for content creators , hire people from websites like dp , or even people who are posting on similar forums as your own

 

Have you read this article yet? A few steps to starting an online community.

 

Google AdSense dose not get traffic, lol. It is not a good idea to add AdSense to a empty new forum. Wait for the forum to grow.

 

No, not really. Why risk losing money? Go ahead and implement the ads.

 

You will not be losing money, a forum with no members and no traffic isn't going to be producing any money. When traffic starts and picks up, then add the AdSense.

 

Submit some informational videos to multiple video sharing sites. Use keywords and back links in the titles, this will get you free traffic directly to your website and will, if done right get you into the top of the search engines.
I have done this myself in just days.

If you are interesting in the tool that I use to post single videos to multiple 20 plus video sharing websites at one time please pm me and I'll be happy to share it with you.

 

it's hard to say if you don't know how to spend the budget for advertising.

 

I agree, having ads from the start may give some users another picture. I wouldn't add ads or any revenue sharing modification unless I had XXXX-XXXXX users, and a good number of active users. It all depends on how you want to manage your community, is it due to the revenue it may generate, or are you willing to do it as a hobby?

Meti

 

I am glad you agree with me, also good explanation.

Anyways if you want to get traffic, post in forums with the same subject adding your signature link, directory submmissions, stumbleupon etc.

 

Get paid posters to post good content. Try to first get some friends to post. You should post at least 30 times a week or more. Post intresting stuff nothing boring or lame. That would attrack people.

 

Post on related forums (but not the exact same topic, might make some people angry) and put your link in sig, advertise with adwords, submit to as many search engines and directories as possible, comment on related blog posts, use social networking and booking sites, try and get a few friends to constantly post new information on the forum daily (makes forum look busy)

I think you should build up a userbase before introducing ads, might be smoother transition if you introduce ads along with a fresh forum look, updates, or mods

 

im sure damweb meant to say adwords, meaning its expensive to buy ads.