Populating a new forum is is a hard work -especially if the web site is quiet. How did you manage to make your forum busy? Thanks
Promoting a forum without budget is difficult unless you have a active group of initiators and moderators. If you have some budget, try to launch contests (referrals etc) to attract more participation. A valuable case study: EarnersForum
Turn off your email authentication at the start to make it easier for people to post initially.... ...start posting yourself like mad, use the same password for all your usernames, to make it easier for you to add. Make posts in similar forums. Give the users an incentive to post, even you have something they really want, make them post 5 times to get it. Make more posts yourself.... If you build it they wil come!
yup KC TAN and tomred have some real great points there. another way is to go into a forum like digital point here and offer people incentive to post at your forum. e.g 2$ for 50 post via paypal
I've found the easiest and quickest way maybe even the cheapest. Is to just hire people to post for you. In the time it takes 10 people to make 50 posts you can get the work done that it will cost to pay them to make those posts. Cheers, Josh
Hiring people to post on your forums seems like a good way to get some traffic to new forums. ~ Sirius Lin
I've never done this, but I've seen people launch a forum with prelaunch competition. Basically forum owner shows ad base on the no. of posts a member make within a particular time frame - so it encourages posting at the beginning. You can do it in conjunction with the hiring posters suggestion.
I have been advertising my web design forum via avatars, and paying a couple of people to post, anyway after 4 days, its already got nearly 300 posts. My next move is to buy VBSEO, add a marketplace & more sub forums, and then get link building.