How much do you have in your budget to promote your forum and what target that do you want to achieve? Most importantly, is your site ready for promotion? Show us the URL and ask your question in a more detailed manner. We can't help with such a low amount of details provided.
I would agree with sean84. The problem with forums especially if you have no capital to invest is people goto forums to read advice, if you don't have a community to begin with then this is difficult. Try building up a friend base with like minded people, it's a small start to your community but it is at least a start!
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change the color scheme personally... and this is just my opinion I do not mean to be negative. But I associate trading stock and the such with the color green. And the pink just is not doing it for me. You have to think in the mindset that your users will be thinking... First when people come to a forum they usually browse for an extended period of time, so you want the colors to be pleasing to the eye and associated with the content. Second, there is definately a psychological thing going on... people who come to tyour forum will definately have money on their mind, you want to reinforce this concept with making your forum flow around the idea of money, but who knows you may be based in some other country where money is a different color. Hope thiese ideas spark some new ones. Dont give up on it though
lol...yeah green would be a much better selection of colors. Fast promotion? The only good ways I can think of will send inexperienced people and give you inexperienced members who will just flood with newbie questions. .....thinking...... Can't come up with anything. I wish you would of posted this before you spent time/money on the project... I would told you to PM me and advised you not to launch it because of competitors and the chance of people leaving your forum for a better forum with more members. I would of told you to pick a new category...even offered to sell you one of the greatest ideas for a forum in the history of forums. Sorry.
I beleive that if you create some subpages that has interesting articles and a link to the forum - then it will be a better way to attract traffic. Forums are difficult to get going on its own.