Can be found at - http://www.powelly.com Started it about 3 weeks ago or so and it isn't going as well as planned... As of right now, i currentlly have: 31 registered users 22 topics 84 posts Its very slow moving and i really want to get the ball rolling but no matter how much time/effort i put in, i am not getting sign-ups/posts I am getting good search engine ranks in google (imo) for my terms considering it is a new forum: money making forums - 15th money making forum - 14th online money making - 47th I have written quite a few guides for the forum also which are on the front page of it, tryed to get traffic to the forum by digging the guides. Want any advice i can get... layout, content, categories anything please ???
Looking good so far. But 3 weeks is nothing. A forum can take weeks, months (or even years) before it really is active. Keep posting, keep advertising!
Looks good but maybe you should remove your google ads untill you get more members as at the moment you will not make hardly any money and they might be scaring people away.
As mentioned above, 3 weeks is very young for a community. It takes at least several weeks of nurturing and daily interaction with the site.... Try running promos... run RSS imports of news stories relating to money making, and above all, ... participate actively... have your new members introduce themselves and welcome each and every one. Ideally, followup their introduction posts with personalised questions to make them feel even more welcome. Rob
Maybe you could add a contest as it is about making money. That might get a few more people onto your forum.
I think you should change the lime green to dark green. Adn the background, make it pure white instead of off-white.
I have been in the forum business for about 8 months now and I am under 800 users! I have found it's not the member stats that you should be looking for, it's the quality threads and posts! Your thread count should be triple your member #. I am nowhere near that, would like to be though! The more quality threads you have the better, it will keep the new users coming and searching, posting, looking at your forum!
I agree on the google ads. That space could contain some real good info or an announcement about your site.
Can I make some suggestions, with a little bit of a "wake up" call? First, nothing personal, but I think your home page is horrible. You have a "welcome" message instead of content. Imagine if you will going to Amazon.com or BestBuy.com and seeing a message that says "Welcome! We sell stuff, and you can click the links over there to see them. Sign up now!" You really need a home page with articles *right there* in front of people's faces. Think "Newspaper" and "Front page news!" Second, I know your site is small and new, and you may be strapped for cash, but you have to invest a little to get a site going. Why not upgrade to vbulletin? You could lease it for a while and they upgrade. The difference is that your forum software right now really is lacking. Third, and maybe one of the most important things is to have QUALITY content. Your "general" forum has 4 posts, and they all ... <kawf>suck<kawf>. Then you have Off-Topic as the next forum? I would think you would want to have a section on "Articles" first that focus on certain topics and have lots of content! You HAVE great content, but people have to search for it! This article: http://www.powelly.com/SEO1.php Hey, that's good stuff! Why not make that your home page? Huh? Speaking of your home page, it's dead. Remember that? Now if you were using vBulletin, you could install VbAdvanced home page and you could pull articles from the forums, plus have links down the side that are automatically updated. You want your home page to change, and with a forum and people posting you can have visitors "do the work" for you. There are lots of sites that do that. Google Ads - hey, they're fine, but maybe (1) make them smaller and (2) put them on the same place on every page. Finally, looks. Your site looks cheap. How are you going to show people you know how to make money when your site doesn't reflect that? Yeah, looks aren't everything, but they sure help! Who is your competition? What niche are you filling that they don't? How do you stand out and offer better advice or info? All those links... what's the point? You have all those links on your home page but no description of what they go to. Links should be descriptive and useful. Those just don't make any sense. Therefore, if *I* were you, I would: 1. Get vBulletin 2. Get VbAdvanced 3. Make an awesome color scheme 4. Get an awesome header/banner 5. Carefully organize the forums into great sections that are different/better than my competition. 6. Put it all together. 7. Write GREAT content and articles at least once a week 8. Invite people, carefully, not by spamming. 10. Reply to all posts with as much info as possible. 11. Maintain. It took me well over 2 years to get my forum up and running, but because I focused on success my site is now the worlds largest. It's taken a lot of work, and a lot of "make it better" but only cost me time and effort. Now it makes great money. Good luck!
Wow that is a great post thanks for the advice i'm going to work on msot of those points minus the vbulletin one for now anyway i will stick with punbb iv already started creating graphics to make the skin look less 'plain' (gradient instead of solid colour fills)
sorry but the topic of the forum is overdone and you will probably find it hard to make it as successful as ones that already exist. but gl.
as of yesterday... - new frontpage portal layout - new layout - new categorys - new cash mod...new ideas to get people posting let me know what you guys think of the new layout
Better, but there is still no content. Now it looks like one of those domain parking web sites. Get rid of the welcome message. If I were you, I would take the Guides and put them on the left side, and put a 1-2 sentence blurb under each one... Then put one of the articles smack in the middle, like the one I was talking about before. Find your best article and put it there. And maybe get some graphics? Your header is pretty weak. Lemme know if you have a budget and I can put something together for you.
Install phpbb2 and take my SEO services and you'll see alot of difference. Here's a link to go. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=271850