Forum Growth & Other Competition

I run a forum, for which I've identified three major competitors. They are all large, active forums on my topic.

My budget it zero $ at this point. What can I do to encourage activity?

 

grobar,

Nice billiards site! I'm in a similar situaiton with a new forum, except I don't have any members at all

How did you get the members that you have now?

 

Thanks. Those members are 95% me. I get decent traffic, tons of forum pageviews, but no posters. Some register, but rare anyone posts. I just keep adding a few posts a day (useful posts only) and hopefully soon it will pick up.

I am RREALLY tring to avoid paid posting - I mean - what random writer is going to know a lot about billiards or in your case, UFOs? Thats right, probably none!

I did do a post exchange- which helped freshen up the results, but really, if you are gonna post in someone else's forum, why not just post in yours. Plus, even with that, quality was not great. The guy was copying stuff off the net and pasting it. I had to spend time cleaning up all that stuff!

I guess the key is just hard work here! put in some elbow grease!

 

I have heard that a lot of forum owners have started out by registering serveral ids, and basically talking to themselves until they start getting some members. Nobody wants to join an empty forum, which is were I am at right now.

I guess I'm going to have to register more ids myself and just start posting. No budget for hiring a posting service, plus, as you said, our topics are such that no is really going to be able to write about them with any substance.

Also heard too many horror stories about posting services - not that all are bad, I just know that I would probably pick the wrong one.

 

To encourage activity... Controversial topics and debates will guarantee you some activity. For example, I'm a christian and I always disagree or agree with users regarding morality. I made a thread on whether you would cheat on your wife or not and why. This wasn't to get traffic, i just wanted to know. But you get my point.

Controversy

 

good tip, common sense, but how much controversy do you see in billiards

 

Plenty Talk about different techniques people use to cheat and then say that you agree with them I bet you would get some signups of people pissed that you encourage cheating lol

 

I checked out your forum. After looking at it my first reaction was to visit all you google advertisers. Don't click on the links just go to the url. Google would get mad if you clicked on your own ads. These people spend money advertising billiard products online. Then you email them telling them you are looking for sponsors to help promote your billiard site. You could offer them a prominent position banner ad on your forum which I am sure they would love. Basically don't wait to make money from google. Make money by selling ads yourself, get paid upfront, and then buy visitors from places like google.

I've done this before, and it works really well. You are also telling billiard experts about your forum. Even if they don't sponsor you could get them as a new member. Maybe you could even work that into the email. Hey saw your google ad...was wondering if you would like to join my forum?

 

Excellent advice, which I will certainly investigate. Rep for you.