We all know that starting a forum is hard. Very hard. And there are some good tips here for those starting out. I have had a forum now for about 5 years. I spent a lot of time on it in the beginning. Creating multiple users, posting and answering myself, getting friends to join. It took a long time before the forum was really self generating in terms of posts. Probably 2 years. I have also spent about $5/day on adwords promoting the forum since day 1. I was lucky to find a great Mod to assist. He is really into the forum and gives great responses and tips. Really knows the topic well. But we are not growing as much as I would like. I wanted the forum to be an active and useful site for members, but i also want the site to generate some income for my retirement fund! We have about 5,000 members now but really only about 200 of those are active. We have adsense. That makes about $150 / month. But I give that away as a quarterly prize in an article competition. Prize is $500. The competition was to encourage new members and more participation, but I am not sure it helps much. Not many entries. But I cannot really take it away now. Would not look good. So my challenge now is to give my forum a real boost. My main objective is to make money from it. More than it does now. Maybe $1,000 a month. Who knows. Not sure what is possible. My only money making activity currently is adsense. But maybe there are other good ways to monetise a forum? The frst stage though I think, is to boost the membership and member activity (posts) significantly. Maybe 10 times! After that, I can introduce more money making ideas, that hopefully also add value to the members. It would be nice to have 2 polls here. How to boost membership and how best to monetise. But I think that is too hard in one poll. So let's start with boost membership. Can't make money without members... Please take part in th poll, and also post other ideas that we can all share.
I voted link building, but to be honest, to be successful you need to combine several of those options. Post a lot yourself, generate new interesting discussions, but don't overdo it. Focus on link building to gain organic traffic, and for short term gains consider investing in PPC or banner ads on high traffic, related websites. It's never easy starting out, but just keep at it and you should begin to see results (as you clearly are, already!).
It depends on the type of forum you run just a general chat forum is easy to get members you really do not have to promote much to get members. Adult forum is super hard to promote I promote all over IRC have a twitter page for the forum promote on Myspace & other forums after 4 1/2 months only 35 members & I am really the only one posting. I would say buying advertising on other sites is your best bet since I have not paid for any advertising it is hurting my forum.
My top 3 in particular order. Post a lot yourself Use social networking Go nuts on link building Posting yourself is going to show dedication from any new members. Using social networking is fairly easy and for the most part free. Link building is essential for search engines and will bring you traffic too. The rest of the list are all viable for traffic and activity but those 3 would be my top choices.