Hi, I own a forum where people share and discuss videos from many different sites like Vewgle, Google Video, etc.. I have a problem...I get lots of sign-ups but no-one ever posts. I have email verification on and people are verifying their email and everything. What's the problem? How could I market my site so people will want to post. I only have a few frequent posters. I just want EVERYONE to post What could I do?
Nobody wants to post in an empty forum so you could use a paid posting service if it looks too quiet early on, also run a competition that requires some input/posting like the funniest video/picture thread where users have to register to post their favourites and the winner gets xx
When new pople sign up and don't post, check their website URL in their profile. I'll bet you 4 out of 5 end up at a 404 page. Jim
they may be signing up to just view the threads, on my forum i have a max number of 4 views per guest and then they have to sign up, but i offer no activation email and no security code, just a username and password and email, tempts people to sign up more, try to offer more incentives, like free ebooks, or webhosting, i offer free 30gb and 100gb transfer hosting (shared) for just point 50 posts, been quite successful, and i have saved alot of money on not paying people to post.
Even I had the same question. Mine is 1 month old forum with over 700 posts and 60+ members. But I do get new sign ups with 0 post. Thanks you started this thread. So far I had only 1 spammer. He was trying to sell pills in my hosting forum. He tried to do this twice. I finally banned his user id and email. But the other sign ups with 0 posts do not seem like spammer. Hope someone with experience in running forums would answer this.
You need something that will make them come back and join in your forum. I suggest that you make sure that your forum has enough activity and interesting topics. --Joe
Well, my forum is not empty..People do post, just not enough, I'd like atleast 65% of the people who sign up to post Here are my stats. I have around 40-60 people on at any given time. Forum Members: 5,956 Total Threads: 3,305 Total Posts: 10,930 @ matt :You don't need to be registered to view any threads in my forum @Jim: I'm not really sure what you mean. Could you elaborate? I get 3-10 posts a day. It's not like I'm not getting ANYTHING. I guess what I am really asking is how can I take it to the next level. I want everyone to be posting and communicating. As I said before, it's a forum where videos are shared. Videos are embedded directly in the forum (so no people are leaving). All I ask is for them to at least post a comment, you know what I mean? Or is it more of a domino effect where once the ball gets rolling, everyone is going to start posting. I want it to be one of those forums where people are addicted to it and it's real fun (now I'm just rambling). I tried an incentive..It was a points system, but that didn't really seem to work. The URL is VsjejlsdEdafdafW3333GabcdefLddddddE (dot com). Take only the bold letters. I don't want search engines lurking around here . Anyway, if you could tell me your first impression/the first thing you did/why you did/didn't sign up and why you would/would not post, please inform me. Thanks guys
Use T0ps30's forum promoting software, i dont know much about it but you shoudl read up on it, iv heard it is pretty awesome. That might help you.
I have the same problem too, my forum is growing slowly but hardly people post anything up.. hmm.. what's t0p30's forum promoting software? you got the link to it?
This does not exclude the possibility of automated spamming. A script can sign up and verify the email. If you really want to be sure that spammers aren't signing up by bot you need a captcha, and ideally a text one where you have written the question yourself. I believe PhpBB has a mod for this. Is your memberlist accessible to search engines? If so, it might just be a case of spammers signing up to get a link. Once you've excluded the possibility of spammers, you just need to work on getting your existing members to post. Try to make as many controversial posts as you can, because sometimes it just takes a bit of provocation to get people to respond.
I think digging out few interesting & sticky post in digg like sites can boost traffic and new sign up as well.
my forum was like that took about 6 months (with little advertising) and i had to post most off them, like i said in my earlier posts, offer incentives for people to post, i offered free hosting, and after 6 months of setting up its not starting to pick up and having a couple of posts a day,
Ha ha! it took 16 posts to ask the URL, normally people ask in the 2nd or 3rd post Yeah... Whats the URL ?
I don't think they are bots judging by their name and what they do on the forum. Sometimes I "spy" on them and see where they go and they just roam around like anyone would, but they don't make any replies