Need ideas on how to attract members to my forum...

hey everyone, i am coming to you for some help!

i just made a new forum and am having some trouble getting members to sign up. I started hiring people to post on it so i can build some content to and make it look lively. I have also been purchasing some high quality links for marketing.

The trouble is that not much of the traffic i get is converted into users. I was thinking about having contest to attract visitors, or keep building content and links. Do you guys have any ideas on how i can get more members for my forum (its health related by the way). I wonder how this site got members in the very beginning. I know i need to have patience, but anything i can do right now to boost the process, or any advice you guys have i would very much appreciate. Thanks!

 

Have you tried writing a few articles and using your forum URL in the resource box?

Allen Graves

 

what do you mean resource box? sorry but i am unfamiliar with this term...

 

You can submit articles to sites like ezinearticles.com or website-articles.net and they allow you to add up to two or three hyperlinks to your website at the end of your article.

If you write well, it's worth a shot.

AL

 

hmm great idea i actually never thought of that but sounds like a really good idea. thank you i will do this! do you know if this is good for traffic or pr or both?

 

I just joined. Hopefully, that won't be the kiss of death.

 

It is good for immediate traffic, if it's got a good title and in a high traffic niche. But it's better for PR and organic searches after a day or two where people find your article via a Google search and then click through to your forum...if the article is good and leads them to your resource links.

AL

 

For me on of the best way it to post to health related blog and invite them to your forum. Paying someone to post in a forum is a good idea if you just starting -but for me the best thing to do it to look for people who is interested in your forum.

 

I also started a new forum and found a great idea which i will share

search for big boards in google and in the first result search for the forum which matches your niche

become a active member of that forum and leave you link in signature,...

if you post regularly there than daily you will get around 5 hits...may be 20-30...

it does bring in members...

check my forum in my signature...

 

Joining. Valuable poster here with great information in the diet/obesity niche. Is it ok to post video, reference blogs, etc. to the forum?

 

Also, running a little competition also works too; Even if the prize is something like a SEO recommendation for your website. We were running surveys and had minimal responses until we said we would give a free SEO recommendation to a random person who filled out the survey. We got a much better response...

hth
Markus

 

Try making your forum look a little more unique. Change the skin or get a custom skin designed for you

 

I see you need some content - but I don't think the copy/paste article thing is such a great idea. Just my opinion.

Looking very spammy. Not to mention - have you seen some of the articles and things on there?

 

knucklehead what do you mean? i have seen the articles on there they are mostly for building content. many of them are professionally written. i purposely did not put any ads on there or pop ups so it did not look like spam at all. thank you for your suggestion, but can you please advise on what i should be doing differently?

 

Try having a contest with a prize for most posts

 

i am definetly goin to have a contest when i get more members, right now i think that only liek 3 people will participate in it so it will kind of suck....here is the link for my contest, tell me if you think its a good idea, i am basically thinking about giving away ipods and tshirts but people seems to want money instead. mostly because many members are overseas.

http://tucora.com/showthread.php?t=1495

 

If it is a health related website, you can try and uploading content as your main purpose and then with the forum as a side part. For example, have a bunch of articles on workouts, diets, etc. Everything like that is good for keywords. And then at the bottom of the articles have something like "Discuss this article in the forums"

Having free articles as your main content will be the best. Then you can double revenue and expand your traffic. You can usually get someone to write a few articles for you for around $4-$5 per article in the marketplace. Other than that you can try out social bookmarking, and joining other related forums as the previous posters have said..

 

i am a pretty active member in both stumble and digg. i have heard that the other social bookmarking websites are not so great so i try to concentrate mostly on these two. I will definitely get writing some articles and posting them, it sounds like it would be great for traffic! i guess the most important think i must have is patience! im sure if i keep up the hard work and dont do anything stupid then i will have plenty of members soon enough!

 

I advise you to start any Contest. Traffic just start Flow automatically

 

you already have good amount of thread in your forum??

did you pay for those or are they real members??