Hi, I own an ongoing text-based game project: civ-online.com It does ok and I'm quite happy with it, as it gains a consistent few new users every day. However I'm looking to boost the traffic to the site and therefore increase the sign-ups. At the moment I've purchased article submissions, social bookmarking services and now I'm looking at myspace advertising. Have you had a similar site? Do you have some advice or tips? I'd appreciate any input. Thanks, Lee.
All the backlinks in the world won't necessarily increase membership. The three example tactics you mentioned don't strike me as having terribly high conversion chances. I'd say try to offer some kind of incentive to get people to register. You can get them to the site... getting them to sign up is entirely different, and you need to give them a good reason to do it. You're giving away turns for forum posts... maybe do something similar if they sign up within a limited time frame or something?
the best thing to do is simply find similar-games with large fanbases and post in their forums, communities, etc. at the same time, make sure you are doing everything you can for SEO
What is your conversion ratio? How many unique visitors per day are actually signing up? Just asking because addressing some basics might help more than marketing at this point, and will make all future marketing more effective. By basics I mean organizing the layout and improving design, improving conversions with selling points and a call to action, and providing incentives for signup (even if they aren't tangibles). If you have even a small budget PM me and I have a few affordable offers I can make to help you on your way. I have lots of traffic in MySpace/tech/gaming crowds.