I'm willing to spend some money (low $xxx) to get my forum active, but I want that money to be spent well. It's a website about a drug (see sig) and I've sent AdWords an email asking their opinion on whether or not it's acceptable (it's legal in many areas) but no reply yet. Where would you suggest I advertise to get some traffic going to the forum?
Email bloggers in that niche and ask them to mention your forum in a post, possibly in return for a backlink. Comment on blogs and *subtly* mention your forum, something like, "I agree. Many of the users in my forum have the same mindset - I think that most people do."
Finish your front page first... Post on relevant other forums, contact bloggers that can relate, and keep your sig link live. Set up Google Alerts for when pot hits the news and then re-write the articles that pop up into their own threads. This can keep things current and will promote discussion. (it is good form to give a source link still). Be a fair and active admin, and make sure that your mods are fair and active. Promote your members to mods, that way other members have something to shoot for. Most if not all of your advertising can be free if done correctly, so save your cash and put in some more elbow grease One of the best free methods of advertising is making your forums public so that bots and guests can read the posts. I won't bother with a forum if I can't read it...and I can't read yours.
Thanks for the tips.. I forgot the most recent IPB pain... Guests can read forums but not view topics.. ugh.
128,000 competitors for "legalize marijuana." Create a homepage for your site, not the forums and post articles, pictures, facts, polls, and more articles. SEO, submit your site map to google quite a bit, you should get in the top 10 within a few weeks.
You may consider hireing a reputable paid forum posting company to get a few high quality discussions started that encourage new members to join in. It can be hard to find quality ones but there are a few out there.
Link Submission, Trade Banners with similar niches, post exchanges. That kind of thing just takes time and not money. What is your budget?
Find blogs related to this topic and make useful comments. Be sure to insert your URL. This gets free and quality traffic to your forums. As mentioned above, not many people join dead forums. I suggest getting 2-3 friends to start posting and liven up the place. Interesting topics will get people to want to join and participate.
If you're talking about your forum for Legalize Marjuana, You need to add useful content that support people who are struggling to "Legalize Marijuana!". Without useful content it is very difficult for you to promote & to get members, since the topic seems offensive to me.
you have a chicks section.....copy and paste posts from other adult forums, and post them in your chicks section, then submit to ddl sites like katz.to. trust me, this will bring some very good traffic. be sure to play by the ddl sites' rules though; if you do, it's very easy to get listed.
Forums are difficult to get going. You will have to do all the three pumpings togather 1. Get someone to post on a regular basis - start with 10 to 20 posts daily and regularly. 2. Post on other blogs 3. Create some pages Even with that it will take a lot of time before it takes off on its own. Three months is a reasonable time. Also forums are not very profitable unless with a huge traffic. So you will like to add some pages anyway.
This will probably be one time traffic only. And Katz.to will not accept you. Most of the DDL sites have a whitelist or require there button or textlink on your page. I really do NOT suggest to use this method above, this is only good when you are running a warez site and this is defiantely not the case. My guess is that just build up content, contact a few mates of you to ask if they can be a posting whore for 1 or 2 weeks and then just post your website on other forums and such. Greetz
very untrue, i've been working with katz for a while now and personally know the admins, they have a porn section where a lot of forums submit their 'babes' section posts. you can get a good 2-3k visitors/day with 10 submissions, and they allow 50/day. yes you do have to place a small button at the bottom of your page, small price to pay though because katz has made many forums into successful forums. also, it's not one time traffic, i have months old submissions still sending me hits. biatch, you might wanna do a little more research into ddl's
write lots of articles and post in other related forums. You can do this totally free and save your money
I own several warez sites, one of them has got around 7k unique visitors per day, other one 3k and the a few little ones. Been into warez for many years now. I also know tha admins of katz.to , I even know admin of warez-bb , phazeddl, warezfactor, undernation, name ANY big site lol so trust me I DID research. Submission traffic are the one time leechers only.
well maybe you're dealing with a different ballpark all together with specializing in warez; i run an adult forum and i'm getting veerrry old traffic from katzporn.com, i haven't submitted in a few months now and i still get a good 1k+ hits, from submitting 10 items a day about 5 times total. as far as getting approved, all i did was use the phpbb3 default skin and put a katz button on my site. i got a 3 rating and was approved a day after creating the forum. didn't take a lot to get up. anyways you have to admit as far as traffic goes it's a good way to get some, and if a few of the porn people are interested in the issues his forum is about they'll surf around and join.
True, it is a GOOD way to get fast temporary traffic. But the main goal is to have people return to your site because of the quality of content that it has. Greetz
now there's something we can agree on =D the way his forum is now nobody will stick around, it's way too bare.
yea, you want to encourage members that you want to keep... and have them post.. you want an active forum! I am running a competition on my forum right now.. it has attracted a few users.. we'll see how that goes. Link dropping so far has been my most effective method, my forum has not even been open a month and I am averaging about 120 uniques per day..