Don't Know What To Do now

So I have a new Martial Arts site. It's now my only site and it's my passion so I want to put everything I have into it.
I feel that the design is pretty good and I also have a decent bit of content (like 5 good articles and a good amount of forum posts for being new).

I've also been lucky enough to get a good affiliate (UFC Official Store) and that is the only ad I got on my site. My site is non profit, and thats the ONLY ad I have.

Now I don't know what to do.
I'm waiting for a new MOD to come out for the CMS I got, which could be anywhere from a week or two to about a month or so. It's so I can have a video section. Before I changed CMS It was a popular feature of my site and people loved it. However, I want to get it up and running now.
What should I do?

Also, how would I go about getting permanent, 'real' members?
I know there really aren't any fast ways, but I don't want to do something that takes years-- it does my head in.
I'm impatient. I want the users NOW!! LOL But I know this isn't realistic.

I also want to do competitions to reward existing members, but more importantly get news ones. But I need some members to start with (Otherwise only a couple of people will enter the competition and it will be useless), so it's a bit like a viscous circle. I'll probably be giving decent things away too like iPods and cash...

Thanks for any advice what-so-ever.
The Link is also in my signature if you want to suggest any improvements to the site or what I could change about it or whatever.

+REPS for everyone that's useful

 

Develop small stuff for your community to get involved That's the way to go, let them place videos, pics, histories etc etc

 

The only way to get 'real' members is to build a real community. Get involved, answer as many comments as you can (that need interaction) get people involved in the forums, etc.

When you create a sense of community your users will want to come back and participate.

 

Good suggestion! You'll be pleased to know that I'm enforcing this already

Again, thanks for the suggestion. Interaction is obviously a must-- and I've been doing it.
As for the 'When you create a sense of community...' I think that's great advice thanks! I'll try my best.

You've both been +Repped
Anyone else?

 

Hate to double post, but any more advice from anyone?

 

I really like the design of your site...except for the puke green background. Overall it's very nice looking.

But I would start by joining other martial arts forums, and finding martial arts blogs to comment on. Start there and see where it leads you.

Also consider contacting a few sites about advertising if you have the money. There are a lot of martial arts sites out there that will sell you ad space cheap (when I worked at Bodog Fight I actually found a fighting website that had thousands of members and they sold ad space for dirt cheap...that was alot of fun. I think we paid out like $100/month and we were getting over 1000 uniques daily from their site lol). The reason it's so cheap is most of those sites will display Google Adsense, which for martial arts displays the standard network ads rather than targeted ads (not a big market I guess).

Are you the one writing the content for it? I'm curious as to why you divided the articles by geographic origin of the style they discuss.

PS - love your username

 

Hi allthegoodnamesweretaken! (Cool nickname btw )

I'll give you some tips and advices on how to succeed with your website, but first you need to understand the basic principle of internet marketing. It's very simple actually:

Traffic / Conversion = Customers/ Leeds/ Regular visitors/ Forum Members/ Whatever you want

First you need to have some steady flow of targeted traffic coming to your website. Here are few tips how to get it:

1. SEO : You NEED to do some SEO for your website mate! As far as I can tell you the website is not very optimized now. You have to do your homework and make a spreadsheet with all the keywords you would like to target with your website. They need to be low-competition high traffic keywords of course. Then should create pages with optimized content for every keyword you have and after that build build build links to them. There are A LOT of opportunities in your niche, but the topic is really a BIG one, so I can't give you advice on every aspect of SEO. Just research, learn, test and you'll see the success in the long run.

2. "Social" Traffic : First of all I thing it will be great if you have a blog along with the community. That creates great user interaction, but more on the topic later. You need to take some share of the "web 2.0 traffic". Participate in relevant social communities, or make your own ones. You can compile a list of social bookmarking websites on your topic or similar ones and submit your content to them. You can also target your audience that is part of the big social media sites, like youtube (!), del.icio.us, digg, StumbleUpon (!) and any many more. You can be active in their groups, you can even create your own social network in mixx.com or ning.com. Take maximum from Twitter, FriendFeed, MyBlogLog, BumpZee or MetaCafe. Write good posts on Yahoo Answers...

Make a good video about martial arts containg a link to your website - submit it to Youtube and Metacafe, than bookmark it on del.icio.us, ma.gnolia.com, propeller.com, digg.com, than put it as featured video on your mixx and ning communities, "Stumble" it, add it to your Bumpzee, MyblogLog and why not Myspace pages, send the link to your friends at all the services at FriendFeed and don't forget to "tweet" about it. Than sit back and enjoy watching your traffic stats going crazy! and that is just part of the fun. You can do so much more than that!

3. Other Websites traffic : Being new in such a big niche is both hard and easy. Hard because you don’t know anyone and no one knows you. The easy part is because you have so many opportunities. Just make some contacts with other webmasters in the niche, be friendly and helpful with them. You may also want to make contacts especially with bloggers in the niche because they can get you some very good links and thousands of daily visitors. There are many tricks to get their attention, but again one post is not enough. As the others have said – participate in a lot of communities about martial arts. If write really helpful posts (like this one –he he ) the traffic will come.

The next thing you can improve is your website’s quality. Here comes the conversion part:

1. You need to be different or at least better than the crowd .Publish not just good, but GREAT content. Why not think about some link bite. Something like “Top 10 martial arts celebrities practice” or ”How to make your iPhone your personal martial arts trainer” –at least try to think of something catch that others will want to link to.

2. Why not put other type of content on your website? Series of training videos for example. That sure will get you a lot of traffic and the more important – the traffic will “stick”.

3. Also make the community there better. You can be a lot more personal to new visitors, by simply not send those automated messages after they register, but take the time to greet them personaly and introduce them to the community. That sure get some time, but once made the member is yours for live. You can start a “tell your friends” competition where the winner with most referred friends will get a new kimono or katana or something useful for them.

4. Three words: Write A Blog! That’s probably the most useful advice I can give you. A good blog will help you bring more visitors and will also keep the old ones coming! The blog will strength the relationship between you and your forum members. It will help you make good contacts in the field.

If you can’t quite understand some of the tips –relax! Just ask and we’ll try to explain everything in details and give you some more advices. But the biggest advice I can give you is : Be passionate about what you do! Everything else will come!

 

@Christian Little
Okay thanks for the design advice-- I can see where you're coming from and I probably will get round to changing it within a week or two, so thanks.
Also, about the advertising. Thanks, I never really thought about this (I've never paid for advertising a lot before). I'll definitely get round to trying it at least.
And lastly the content. Whilst YES it is unique to my site (Martial Chat), I hired an article writer. Naughty I know, but at the time I needed content fast and I had to go on holiday within a few days so I had to get something up. I will begin to write a few articles myself though, I just don't want thousands and thousands...a few'll do me


+ Rep

@SubmitFox
Before I begin on the specifics is what great advice! Very detailed too and you've got a low postcount!
Anyway about my SEO. Yes it's unbelievably poor as you noticed. I'll get round to it probably tonight actually/tommorow max because I know how important it is.
Social Traffic? I've heard it was good but to be honest I've never had the patience or not known where to start-- but I've promised myself I'll crack down, and with your helpful post I know exactly what to do!
As for other website traffic that's always a good idea. I've already started on this (emailed a few people, got a couple of responses) but on a very small scale. I'll be sure to follow it through though.

Well what can I say? Amazing advice, so thanks (goes to everyone that's helped me out by the way-- all of you have added something that the other hasn't, so thanks)

+ Rep

Big Thanks to both of you

 

First of all, grats on the DP nickname, totally original, if the site is as original it's perfect.

The things to keep in mind in my opinion:
- Patience is gold, don't just idle around waiting for visitors, don't think you'll pop fingers and boom 69,000 members.
- You need 1 orignal thing - article category, videos, interviews - anything to step out of the crowd.
- Take for example Shoemoney's fighters.com - I hate it, bad design, just text in my mind, be a bit more original as you don't have Shoe's ammo.

All the best,
Scorpiono

 

@allthegoodnamesweretaken

I’m glad you found our posts helpful. I see that you have some problems with the social traffic. Yes the traffic is great. They don’t click on ads or buy anything, but they can be loyal readers and the most important linkers! Here are few more tips that will help you with your “social quest” They are basic and most of the members here will already know them, but they will be useful for you:

1. Always bookmark your content at the social bookmarking sites. Make good accounts to all the sites here : http://socialmarker.com/ and bookmark every single article, video or anything else you or your writer create and publish at your website. By the way SocialMarker is a great and free tool that will save you A LOT of time. At first you may find it a bit complicated, but after an hour you’ll be wizard of bookmarks Bookmark just one article and you’ll see the difference in your traffic stats.

2. Make a search on Google for Martial Arts Community or Martial Arts Social Network, Martial Arts forum if you like. Start posting there not just to dump your sig file with a link to your website, but to make friends and from time to time when you publish a really great article PM them with a link to the article, ask them about their opinions and ask them if they would like to bookmark this article at their del.icio.us account for example. This will be a major step in your “social marketing” if you do that the right way.

3. Pick 3-5 big social networks when you will be a very very active member, you don’t want to submit only your content there –just be useful, creative and helpful there, so the people will know you when they see your name. Big traffic spikes can come when you write an article about topic that interests the whole community or the part of that is in you niche and if you again “notify” your friends about the content , you have created. I personally recommend you to use del.ico.us, StumbleUpon, MyBlogLog and YouTube. Write comments, participate in groups, submit relevant and interesting contend and links….Every community has it’s own advantage and you have to research them, the ways to attract more visitors from special communities, the ways to approach them. For example – at del.icio.us the members like to see BIG profiles with lots and lots of links bookmarked, with great tag system, with link collections, at StumbleUpon they like to see you have discovered great tips and interesting content that is hard to find and submit it there.

4. Always do “the chain”. For example you have article about the evolution of karate – first bookmark it, than you can ask a friend in stumbleupon to read it and to tell you what he think. Usually he’ll give it a “thumbs up” at stumble upon, than you can send it to all your friends, than you write a short summary of the article, put a link to your website in it and post it as a thread in the martial arts groups you participate in ning.com for example or in mybloglog.com. As the discussion about the article grows you can always ask if the bloggers at mybloglog can share the link with their visitors and readers. When the traffic arrives to you article don’t forget to put the “social buttons” so the people that are already coming from del.icio.us for example can bookmark it to their page and bring more visitors….You see – it’s like a snowball of traffic.

5. Don’t just take – Give to the communities! They are already tired of stupid marketers that do nothing more than asking for votes and links to their own content. Again – be helpful, submit the content of your blogger friends and bookmark it. Create relationships!

If there is anything else you want to get tips for, just name it! Always glad to help!