How did you start your forum?

I know it's a HUGE challenge to get members to join your forum. Currently I have a couple forums with NO members but myself. How do you get your first 10 users on the forum? How 'bout more? I want real members, not paid.

Any tips?

 

Whats the niche of the forum?

 

I've got a few forums that were born out of mailing lists. Given they were previously mailing lists, move the membership to a forum format took an existing userbase and built on it. Much like DP, that is how a lot of early forums were born.

 

Niche of the forums will be political as well as sports related.

 

Wow, that is an interesting mix? Political and Sports? Interesting.

 

haha. No sorry, two different forums. That would be interesting indeed.

 

Oh, ok, I was really wondering what on earth would bring those two together. Thanks for clarifying.

 

When you get a newspaper there are normally two types of readers...... those who read the politics and leave out the sports section or those who read the sports section and leave out the politics.

Those two niches are just too different to be compatible as they have completely different user bases (when people are talking politics they'll be too serious for who will win the latest dance championship).

 

Try getting some friends who have the same interests to be the first people to join. Usually the start of a forum is done through networking with friends or getting people interested.

Most forums don't make it just by being a forum, the site and content on the site usually bring people in. Then once people are on the site, they like to discuss issues with other users on the site.

 

It depends on the niche aswell. I created a celebrity forum a couple of months ago and posted myself a few posts..now, the forum has more than thousand members.

 

well you must have interesting topics..

 

i suggest you create youtube vids.. the one who is really attractive

 

first you decide who are the visitors you are targetting of that forum . draw such crowds from other forums, google ads, links, blogs, directories and many more.

for myself, i run a forum board for an educational insitution . i used mass emailing to draw students to the forum board .

 

Several of you have mentioned emailing lists. Where does one get these from?
Thanks!

 

There are lots of that kind of service (emailing lists) on BST section.. I got 13k emailing list here from my forum.. You might want to occupy my service?

 

My first ten members were actually my friends.

 

I like to push traffic from my existing sites to my new ones. That's one way.

 

Well, just get some activity going. Try doing Post Exchanges and then promote your forum everywhere. It's going to take a while. Good Luck

 

i have one top.

display your forum in your sig and atleast tell us what it is and maybe some people will join lol.

 

first bring traffic from other sites, and start getting some members (friend or stuff).

Good Luck.