I want to host a next generation console forum, and have never paid for any sort of advertisement in my life. I want to get 2k members and then just let the forum run without paying for advertisements. How much Adwords do you think it would cost me to reach this target approximately?
Maybe Adwords is not the best solution. Do it for free. Get 10-20 friends, make the forum, start posting, and just tell ppl on other forums and myspace. Got 200 members in a couple of weeks just doing this.
Its hard to give a specific amount but you would probably be looking into the hundreds and maybe thousands. You have to really think, why would people want to join your forum. Do you offer anything unique or special that the other millions of other message boards dont?
Get some content up with some good SEO, then add the forums. Promoting an empty forum with PPC would be a big waste of money.
You could do it for free, or you could do it for thousands of dollars. It depends almost entirely on how quickly to expect it to happen. The less time you have to spare, the more money you'll probably end up spending.
pay people to create fake accounts . nah, just get some people, pay them to place your link in ur sig and let them post in other similar forums.
The amount of money it would take to get two-thousand members would be worthless because I doubt those members would be interested in the community itself and therefore making it active. To truly get a strong user base of active users, you need targeted member conversions and really the best way to do that is "word of mouth" marketing technique.
Great answers thus far. I think I can also lend some help. No ones going to register & post on a forum which comes across as a ghost town, it's just not worth their time. Forums can be hard to get rolling, but once they take off, people will see it's worth while registering & taking part. Kick Starting the Community There's a site called forum shock (forumshock.com), which will actually go out & flood your site with relevant threads, posts & a number of different members. Site Partnerships You could also wish to do a partnership with some sites. For example a site called ironmagazineforum today took on supplement selling websites, by providing them with a free sub-forum to run. I was thankful enough to be asked to take part, and as you can see he's already got 4 other sites in on the partnership (pretty good for under 24 hours) Helping Product Suppliers With some of my own forums, I actually provide product specific private sub-forums, in which ONLY the people who purchase the product, preferably through your own affiliate link (so you can confirm purchase) are allowed access to the private forum. To all other forum members, the area is hidden (though you can make it viewable & not readable which also has advantages) Then when anyone purchases that product, you liason with the product creators and have them agree to send buyers to your private sub-forum. They may also be willing to email past product owners to give them details on the new private forum created just for themselves. The customer then signs up on your forum, sends you a PM asking for access to the private area, you check the affiliate records & then grant him access. These are awesome for some niches, especially ones which wouldn't know the first thing about setting up & running a forum. Why would a product owner want & allow you to do this? - Less customer service needed on his behalf - He can be the sub-forum mod privledges if he wishes Your Benefits - Traffic - Content - Easy to become the leader of an industry if your hosting all there sub-forums - A bonus to offer for buying through your site (access to the private forum) Promoting on other sites/forums People absolutely hate this. I've had people accuse me of being a spammer just because I had my site's link in the signiture box. By all means jump on the other forums & get them over to your forum, but don't come across as an advertisement. People spot human billboards a mile away. Instead give them a link for a free giveaway/bonuses you've just made. They click the link, it brings up the not authorised to view content page (because they aint members). Customize that message to say, "Hang on, enter your details Here (link to 'register' page) to get access to my freebies" Yeh this is a great way to get members fast, but agreed though most will just signup for the freebies & never come back. I don't believe too much in forums which force ("reward") you to post so many threads in order to get free stuff. Instead how about looking at a competition. Everyone loves competitions, especially if it has forum members going head to head & the visitors are able to vote/poll on the winner. Hope something there helps, has anyone used forumshock here? John Reese meantioned it in his last report I recall... good luck!
Netscape...they still around? Yeh I own a few forums, and yeh they have been a battle to get them where they are today. Definetly worth a look at, its not alot of money for the biggest package, especially with what you get for it