As noted in some threads in other sections, I have recently converted my very old (2002 board from phpBB at http://www.mp2kmag.com/mappoint/discussion to vBulletin, now at http://www.mapforums.com The conversion was successful, most of the regulars are still active and we are getting a lot more visitors, I'm sure partly from vBSEO. What else should I do? Of course there are lots of things possible (have been thinking about implementing revenue sharing), but I'm looking for the best next low-hanging fruit to give it a solid boost. What is your first thought? Also, it would be great to have an experienced vBulletin forum owner as a coach or mentor.. could be a paid thing? what would be reasonable to pay? Eric
I found this site which says it can help -- http://www.vbulletinsetup.com/ any other services you know of that offer vBulletin consulting? Thanks! Eric
I doubt revenue sharing would work as well as it does on webmaster forums because your target audience don't actively use adsense. How exactly do you want to boost it? Membership levels or earnings?
I want more activity and traffic.. more people using the forum. I want to make the forum more attractive to current users so that they stick around longer and are more likely to interact and answer people's questions. I also want to attract more visitors. Eric
Eric, It's not the low-hanging fruit, but creating a style for your forum can help tremendously in making the forum more attractive. Right now it is the default style and it is not blended with your logo. I really like the number of forums you have. You are getting posts in all of them and it's not too long to scroll. I implemented this mod and was surprised at just how much the members liked it. http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=94869 It puts in the poster's local date/time. They really liked being able to see the International times. This says it is for version 3.5, but it works fine with 3.6 also. Another thing I did along with that was add a custom profile option that related to my board. I let them choose from a list and have it display with their posts. Since my forum is about pregnancy and babies, I have people post their current status such as pregnant or trying to conceive. You could do something such as favorite location for streets and trips, url for map services, or whatever appeals to all your members so they can put something personal about themselves. You may want to run a monthly contest of some type. Member of the month that others think are the most supportive could help people to interact and answer people's questions.
OK, thanks. I will take the advice about not bothering with revenue sharing, there is only one guy who I ever did it with before, I will just give him one of the blocks. Also, Jacqueline thanks for the good advice about just being creative and providing value to our participants. vBSEO was probably the only "low hanging fruit" . I should integrate the forum more with the parent/original site mp2kmag.com. Also, I should run the contests as you mention, or if not contests at least provide and point to a page highlighting some forum stats, most responses/replies, etc. and highlight the results in the e-mail newsletter http://www.mp2kmag.com/update (which I should by the way get back to publishing at least bi-monthly). Thanks! Eric