New forums are toughest to market. Mainly because free forum softwares are available in the market or they are quite cheap, which is good I am sure. But that also makes the competition go up. Also there are quite a few well-known established forums on the net(including DP). Its really difficult getting people sign up to new forums. We launched this forum forums.webcosmo.com month ago. It was like a acid test to see if there is any chance at all. After a month we have 100 members with 649 posts within 478 topics. Not bad I guess. I think we did ok with the initial marketing.
It is a good start. Besides, there are always goals we should move to. So don't stop and improve improve and improve)) Good luck
Don't worry about it. You are going very right. Just keep promoting your forum and slowly you will see how the things are changing. It is not only you, every new forum owner faces the same thing.
If you're going to advertise it here you ought to explain a little more of what it's about. That might help bring you a few members. What's the main them for instance? donrock
The best thing you can do is never stop promoting. I would say that 100 members in just 1 month is good. Remember that you need to keep the forum active and keep your users coming back. Do you do a weekly "what's new" style email? This shows users what they are missing and encourages them to pop back. You could also use a forum posting service to liven things up a bit. I have done this in the past with one of my forums. It revived a worn out community within 2 weeks by adding new content and keeping things fresh. Matt..
That is indeed a very good start for a forum. If you can sustain the growth, then it's a job well-done.
NO that is not bad at all. Some forums can't get that many members after months of activity. Personally I wouldn't invest in a forum but if that's what you like then good luck.