Hi I have a new forum related to a particular city. I have around $75 to market. How should I spend this small amount of money to promote my forum. Any tips for promoting are also welcome.
I would say adwords and you can also advertise on my site Free Ads and thats totally FREE !!! How cool is that.
Posting your forum's URL in your post / signature will also help you in promoting your forum. I would suggest you to buy advertisement space on some very high traffic websites.
Thanks for the replies guys. Do you think it will be good idea to pay some forum posters to post on my forum
I think it should be good idea. If you want I can do some job for you. Paid posters were work for me on some of mine forums and it was good Thanks! Much Regards, Dennis Corkovic
Start a youtube channel and name it the same as your forum. Then start publishing videos about the attractions around the city. Once you have subscribers and traffic going to your youtube channel, approach some of the local businesses and tell them about what you are doing. Offer to do a video on their business for a small fee, say $25. For that $25 they will get a video on youtube, a link to their website and promotion on a website with <insert your site stats here>. Do the first couple of videos for a very small fee, say $5. Then you can tell the other businesses that these other people have let you make a video for them. You are going about this backwards. The point is not to "spend" money, but to "make" money. Youtube is one of the best free options to promote your business. Once you are getting thousands of subscribers and thousands of views, you can use that as a selling out for your site and business. Examples: My youtube channel is in my signature Here is a video I where I mention a guys website - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E65br-xiDFw Notice there is a link to the guys site in the video description. The guys website address is visible from about 1:40 - 2:00 in the video. You can sell ad space in these types of videos, links in the video description, have google adsense in them, and embed them into your site. This provides you several ways to make money. So stop "spending" your money and start "making" money.
@kev ... you have a very elaborate business plan in mind. Thanks for the advice. Will surely look into this option.
Thank you, but its more then a business plan, this is being implemented in real life. Once you have your video channels up and running, you can reuse the videos over and over on different video hosting sites. This is a strong selling point. Make one video, then upload it to different video sites. Dailymotion - http://www.dailymotion.com/survivalistboards Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/user/survivalistboards Yahoo video - http://video.yahoo.com/mypage/video?s=1237490 Break.com - http://my.break.com/Member/Profile/mypage.aspx?MemberNickName=survivalist Metacafe - http://www.metacafe.com/channels/survivalistboards/ If I had an extra $75, I would invest that and a little more into a good video camera or some video editing software. If you need a camera, buy that and use windows movie maker to edit your videos. Your $75 will get a lot more advertising through a physical item then spending it in cyberspace on banners or ads. Then, when you approach a business owner and tell him/her you can make a video, publish it on several video sites for a very small fee. With thousands of subscribers and views, you have leverage to bargain with. Personally, I think buying banners, adwords or forum post is a waste of time. And I have the stats and numbers to back up my statements. But that would be another thread.
Don't forget directiory submissions, Social Bookmarking, and try making a few Squidoo lenses about it with links to your forum... (Squidoo pays you to promote your own stuff!)
Listen to me young man, If you will read ANY Search Engine Optimization related book or visit any SEO forum, you will see the only main requirement - to make your website successful, YOU MUST GET AS MANY INCOMING TEXT LINKS AS POSSIBLE. Go here http://www.backlinks.co.ee/ and create 100,000 one way backlinks to your site. You will start getting traffic the very same day.