I have a website which consists of a vBulletin forum, but is pretty much dead because I never put in the effort to keep momentum going. Now, I turn my attention back to it, and I think there is some really good potential because: 1) The domain is now 1.5 years old, with the same theme and content on it for that time period, and at least SOME activity throughout the time. So, I might not have to worry about the 'sandbox.' 2) The domain is very nice: www.topicforums.com where 'topic' is my topic (don't want to give it away), and the domain also has a PR of 3 3) There are 200 registered users, so I have at least a small user-base to send an e-mail about the forum re-launching. 4) Without any promotion, I somehow recieve a registration once every 10 days, so when I start advertising, I should be able to get more people. 5) There is only ONE other large community site for this topic, with 50,000 registered users in their forums. If I can pull this off, there are plenty of users. So, here is my strategy (must be in this order I think): Purchase paid posting for ~2 months Google adwords campaign Banner ads on related sites E-mail the users who are now inactive since I let the forum sit Spread the word in blogs, myspace, etc. Anything else I should do?
Paid posting, meh. It's a good way to ignite that spark once again in your forums, but it's so temporary and the quality of the posts, on average will be very poor. I really think that you would be better off spreading that money elsewhere, into the other promotion you're suggesting. It's hard to give you suggestions if we don't know what kind of site you have....why the need to hold back on the name if you've already registered the domain and built forums? What're we going to do, steal your domain and build forums in lightning speed? Seeing that there is only one large competitor, you should have plenty of potential...as it wont be hard to find their weaknesses and capitalize on them. I say go for it!
Offer something of value to users that have posted in your forum for say 50 posts or something like that. Also you could do a similar thing, offer a product of value on your niche in a special offer mailing. To recieve this product, they would have to use your "tell a friend" function on the website to tell 2 friends about your forum. If you do regular newsletters, you could include the hottest threads at the bottom of each mailing. Brad
GtAce: The forum posting company I work with, on 'average' does not settle for any post that would be considered anything other than high quality. The cynicism I see on these boards is quite discouraging. I take pride in all of my work, no matter what it is, or what it pays. If I agree to perform a service, I deliver it and do not settle for shoddy workmanship. Just because a few irresponsible (likely underage) people have opened up shop and haphazardly received orders that they did not fulfill with the same quality that people who operate legitimate businesses expect, doesn't mean every forum posting service out there is low quality. You just have to look in the right place. Like any other new business idea, when it takes shape on the internet, there is somebody waiting to jump at the opportunity to make a few quick bucks by offering a product or service and just barely delivering what is offered. This way they aren't doing something illegal, so you can't really go after them... but in my opinion it is still a scam. I've been doing business on the internet for a long time, and I remember back in my web hosting business days years ago, that almost every web host out there that started up faced this same kind of cynicism... Today, many of those companies that faced those problems are now making tens of thousands with hundreds or thousands of happy customers... Try to keep an open mind... I know it's hard with the percentage of people out there who don't really mean business... But in the end, somebody has to trust somebody, or nothing will ever have a chance, and we'd all be losing out. The key is reading between the lines... If you talk to the person who's going to be doing your posting, and their grammar is horrible, sentences fill of slang and unfinished... that'll give you an idea of what their posts are going to be like... As for your plan on getting your forum going, it sounds pretty solid. Do you have moderators, or will you be doing all the moderating and administering yourself? That's something you have to consider, because if you already have members and you plan to launch advertising to get more, you have to weed out the bad posts and members that break the rules.
TheException, did you miss my comment about "on average"? I said nothing about your company, I don't even know who you are...but I've seen and heard a whole lot about these companies...I even did some investigative work of my own on 3 of them. I applied as an employee to see how they were being run and it was disgusting. None of them assigned qualified posters to jobs (knowledge/experience was never a factor when being assigned to a job), and while they, for the most part, encouraged quality posts, none of them enforced it. Now, calm down, because what I say is merely an opinion and nowhere did I mention you or your company...There are exceptions to everything, but I, for the most part, have found paid posting to be a poor path to take if you're interested in long-term benefits.
A lot of VBulletin forums nowadays are starting to revolve around large networks (a few examples can be digitalpoint and v7n) and I suggest that you could try and get an established network or website and THEN create a forum revolving around it. Otherwise it would be hard getting more people, in my opinion.
I think paid posting is not the way to go, you will end up with a board full of crap if you do not moderate it very closely
Yeah, people which join your board to post useful information are worth a lot. If you can get around 20 people to post a lot in your forums, my bet says that some pages will get indexed, you get more visitors and pretty soon a few more members! When you pay someone, they probably have no idea what they are talking about and will just write some gibberish, take your money and leave. Good luck with your forum!
GTAce: Sorry, you took that the wrong way, it wasn't meant to be a complaint about what you said, or anything heated, it was just voicing my thoughts on the subject, which were instigated by what you said. No harm done, don't worry. Also, I know you weren't directing anything at me or the company I work for of coarse. I'm glad you continued this discussion. I agree with you in part about it. I've seen some of how these operations run... Much like similar business ideas I've seen in the past, such as support by paying per ticket.. When that first started companies were outsourcing support services, charging say $0.25 per ticket, and copy and pasting text out of Cpanel manuals and stuff like that. It really disgusted me. Now having said that, and been working on the internet for a long time, I paired up with a reputable businessman who had just purchased one of these businesses post launch. We've now turned it into a very good service, with quality you'd expect from professional writers. To be perfectly honest, I oversee myself, who gets to do what posting jobs (If the higher ups of the company are not doing them themselves) and I screen the people who work for us thoroughly. We also offer 2 levels of quality, because everyone knows you get what you pay for. One option is for basic posting, which you will get short but sweet responses and threads that are on topic, with appropriate spelling and grammar, sometimes you'll even get a long in-depth post, but there are no guarantees. The other option guarantees that every post will be at least 50 words, directly on topic, well thought out and if needed researched. Meaning you'll get a post something like this ;-) lschmidt: I would recommend submitting your forum to: http://www.ibbdb.com/ It's still a little new, but it's growing well and will definitely help out with search engine rankings and sending a few interested visitors your way.
TheException...do you mind PM'ing me your posting site (of course you wont mind, haha)...I don't want it for buying purposes, but I like what you are saying here and would like to know which company you run...who knows, I might do some research and start suggesting you
Hey GTAce, PM sent. Just to clarify though, I don't 'run' the business per se, I refuse to take credit where it isn't deserved. My associate Jonathan would be the...uhhmm... curator. lschmidt: take a look at GTAce's signature, that would be a wise place to visit if you are serious about getting your forum going.