Well, I recently started a Gaming Community which can be found here:xile-gaming.net But I can't seem to get any users. I only got 3 registered users but they are really active. Tips? I use vBulletin forum software.
There's a lot of big gaming forums where you can promote your site but I doubt you can have any success on it.... the niche is really saturated.
Well organize some contests or give away some incentive for new members to join. Promote your forum heavily and best way is to participate in other gaming forums and include the contest promotion in your signatures. I hope that helps. It's quite tough but if you try hard, you might achieve your target.
I have ran many successful forums some from scratch and others was paid to consult and bring in members. I have seen the best way to get it started is to make a forum in which you have a strong base. Get friends on the forum first as well as make a few names and post yourself to make the forum look active. You will not get people coming to a forum unless it looks very active. There are many things you need in place to have a successful forum.
Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd! There is some good advice above! Here is what I would do: - Make a few accounts for yourself and post under all of them - Get your active members to invite their friends - Hire a few people from other Gamming forums to post - Offer the new members something like a contest - Make your forum unique in some way - Give the first 100 active members a special ranking on the forum - Get creative; you know the niche, figure out what members would want! Hope this helps!
Please consider a sub board for game cheat codes and walkthrough. Think of what kind of people should visit your forum, and think of what they would like to see. The most important thing is to think of unique things. Just think of something that no one had before. Good luck.
All you need is a few active users to fill your forum up with content. More content = more things people can comment on or become interested in. So try and get some friends to signup and post a couple things.
Don't pay people to sign up. I spent around $500 of a budget once just for this and wanted to try it out. It did nothing for the board other than had a few people posting regularly for the couple of weeks and then it dropped off as soon as everyone did their posts. I was trying this as an experiment and learned it was a waste of time. Best thing to do is make accounts and post yourself then buy some advertising and make a links section on your boards website so you can get a lot of links with gaming blogs and websites or any other relevant niches. Main thing is make it look active and allow DoFollow linking in sig because this can attract a few webmasters who just will post there over and over for relevant links. I am actually writing on E-book on creating a forum soon.
If it's saturated, that means there's plenty targets for hostle takeovers. (legal, hostle takeovers...)