I started a forum less then a month ago. Within this time I have had about 200 members, more then 1500 posts. Few points from me: - Offer something. May be revenue sharing, contest or such. - Get your friends help you. - Be active yourself. I like to learn more on forum marketing from you folks. Appreciate your suggestions.
- get your friends to post (what you said) - have uniques and specials (special ranks, sections, signature etc - similar to yours) - make the forum stay active (post reguarly and good and long post - similar to yours) - use the forum link in big forums (signatures) - submit your forum to search-engines and directories - let make website reviews of your forum - pay the first users for posting - have a good looking forum (vbulletin with own style and own colors) - use a proffessional logo (header)
good forum you have create... with the contest you have... maybe a lot's of people can participate with the contest and get to know about your forum... keep it up..
Appreciate your kind comments. I have some good friends I must say. They are helping me out for no money. And the best thing is we all help each other getting business, and others. Its not only business we talk about, we all try to create a fun environment so everybody enjoy posting. Most of the new members I am having are remarkably knowledgeable in their field. That makes it really helpful getting posts that are useful to others.
i think its not time to make a webmaster forum becuase you have to beat db sitepoint v7n and alot more
You don't necessarly have to beat the big boys, but as long as you can form a community with good amount of members and content, your good to go. The thing with forums is that you need patience and need to work hard at promoting, and throwing new content. I, myself, run a webmaster forum as well, and it's hard to get those members in the beginning - the stage I am in at this moment. My forum is approx. 2 months old too - but haven't done much promoting, stupid exams. By the way, nice forum, keep it up.
I just visited your forum. You got some good posts there. I saw you are using vbSEO, how is it paying off? I was thinking of it, wasn't sure of the return for money spent--after all its more expensive then the vBulletin itself I wouldn't be able to compete with them for now. I am just having fun having a forum, working with friends. If it works thats good, if not thats fine as well.
how about an off topic forum? How would you promote that and what kind of prizes do you think will attract people to participate?
getting friends to help out at the beginning is a good idea. however, you can also get some paid posts at the beginning to get your forum jump started
Make it a quality resource first and foremost with enough of a community feel like general chat forums. Keep the # of forums small until they fill with posts to prevent it from looking like a ghost town. Become obsessive about being active and welcoming new members. If you aren't enthusiastic about it who will be? There are 0000's of forums out there what makes mine different? That's a question that's good to keep asking yourself.
I started a forum 1 week back and currently have ONLY 15 members with 87 posts NO SPAM yet.. http://www.theSenorita.com/forums The niche is discuss about girls and discover them so I think it won't be that big a problem. I am also giving away $100 in a contest. I have joined a couple of forums with related niche and with huge number of posts and have my link in the signature. Let me see how this turns out to be.. please do have a look at it and give me some suggestions. If you join it than it would be relly very great for me. Thanx
Starting to get a lot of spam on my forum. What can I do about it? I'm going to spend a lot more time on it in the next few weeks once my exams are finished.
You gonna need mods to take care of that. I generally give warning at the beginning. Then again you gonna know who comes to the forum just for spamming. Don't hesitate to ban if you need to. I am running a contest now giving away two prizes of one year hosting. My main goal was to get new signups and posts. The second goal looks like would work out, but the first one I doubt. Any idea how to get new signups?
Webcosmo, try finding a Seo or online marketing blog that is already established and ask if you can sponsor a contest where people earn chances to win by posting on your forum. You can read about how ProBlogger did the same thing here: problogger.net/archives/2008/05/09/how-i-increased-page-views-on-my-forum-by-667-in-a-month/ He increased his forum pageviews by 66% in one month doing a contest on his blog.