Want my forum to get active

I just bought a forum and i need to get it started with members and posts.
What is the best way to get members?

Is there anyway i can get fake members?

All suggestions are appreciated!

 

Hi,

I used to run a big forum (around 30k members) which is now down due to some legal issues (I will not expound on this part anymore.)

The way I got my members was I first started posting relative stuffs, anything of possible interest to my potential members. Find a niche on your topics, then do the first postings, patience was my friend when I was doing that.

Sign up to other forums and make your domain name as your username, this puts a little help on awareness, and later on you can include your url in your signature or any other way to promote your link. Do not spam forums because it will only make it harder for you to gain people's trust.

If you have some disposable cash, get somebody to post for you, do a quota, go to craigslist or here and post that you need forum posters. This way, you can get real content because you do not dictate word for word what they want to post so creating some variance on your content.

Lastly, make all initial posts relevant to your forum or topic, not just random giberrish stuffs.

When you get a good amount of content, submit your sites to search engines and one trick I can share is that, try to find some forums where their members has questions, when you find that question, post the answer on your forum and make it look like it was posted at random, then go back to that forum with the question, post a reply to it saying "you found some answers" and lead them to your link. You can also do this with Yahoo Answers and other similar sites.

If you got some videos, post them at youtube and post the youtube video on your forum, on youtube, put your link on the description saying "More videos on this link" pointing to your link.

More stuff you can do but at least this can get you going.

cheers

 

by the way, fake members can also work... for every fake members you have, at least do some postings on that username, to make your site lively.

 

I will say to hire some permanent forum poster for few months. You yourself cannot create many fake Ids and keep posting from different Ids. Offer some contest and prize to keep forum active.

 

If not permanent..you can atleast hire some forum posters on regular basis...maybe every alternate week..

 

forum poster is the way to go to kick start a forum. then u recommend it on other forums or directories.

 

I had the same problems when i started mine, www.teenstalkmoney.com, in november and now it's started getting popular. What is the point in fake members? They make posts then when people ask questions they dont reply and it kills the thread; and on an empty forum dead threads are bad. also posting on other forums like dp with your site in your signature like me \/\/\/ is really good. I also got friends to post.

 

Posting comments on blogs and forums related to the topic of your forum is a good way to get your site out there.

 

May be you can get those forum leech tool that selling on DP to post your forum effortlessly.

 

I dont understand, any URL?

 

make some contests and use them to advertise your forum.... post interesing content for your users.

 

Actually i already have this competiton.

$25 member recruit competition:
http://chiliforums.com/index.php?topic=50.0

 

why not start a posting contest the first member to archive 5k posts will get some bucks for eg (only usefull posts of course)

 

Yes you can get fake member easily by buying lead such as pay per sign up.
But the downside of this is the member will never post at your forum.
The best way to get member is offering incentive to those member who is recruiting their friend to join your forum