Well, I have a gaming forum up and all. (Www.ThermalGaming.Com) Now, it has some posting going on and all but not much, I really need methods of getting it active and getting it more members. I also would appreciate if you posted some gaming forums will sell ad space.
Be ready to spend money for promotion. Go and buy some links and place some banners on Game Portals. You can choose any and contact the webmaster to find out the banner ad price. But it will boost you for a while. As soon as you get rid of banners, your traffic would go down, too. And the best way to make your site more popular is to start new interesting threads every day and promote them via social bookmarks (StumbleUpon, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Diigo, etc.), other forums (like this one), related niche blogs commenting and so on. Make as much as possible to let ppl know about your forum. The other question is how to make them stay, right? And again fresh threads every day can make any person addicted to your forum. If you have many friends, ask them to comment your threads and make your forum look alive and buzzing. Well you got the point: new threads every day, promote them using any tool you find, add fresh comments by your friends and you'll get successful soon. Keep us updated on how is it going with your forum. And reserve some add space for me - I'll buy it when your PR is 7-9
I nearly started my own gaming site, I'd recommend going to torrent, nzb sites where people download many games. You have to be quick though. Most people want to read a review before they download a game and you can jump in there. Write a review of a game on it's way then once it's released post a comment that you've reviewed an so forth. You could set google alerts to check when these things come out. Also like Mulder X Files said forums are a great place to get traffic. Get about 5 main forums and follow whats going on, anytime a trend/game you've written about comes out voice your opinion and let em know where the full stories at. Getting traffic to a gaming site is quite hard so I'd say go full force against other gaming sites. If one writes a review saying a game is great, write a review saying why it's bad and then comment at their post and users will check why your opinions differ, specially if it's a big game/trend. Also porn sites are a good place to let people know about your site, no links of coz. but most gaming nerds are porn freaks.
Well, that is the issue. I don't know of like 5 good forums to target. I am happy to spend money on buying ads but were can I buy ads that you guys know of?
Let me tell you that paid ads will bring traffic to you as long as you spend money on it. It is not that good for a long-term SEO. If you want to spend some money for promotion - you'd better buy some articles. It will give you more good than AdWords. Ads are good when you have 10.000 visitors and want 15.000. Otherwise it doesn't worth money spent on it. When you decide to buy some ads, the best place is Google AdWords for sure. But don't hurry up with it. If your time is not limited, make some researches and write loads of content. And pay close attention to that post by aspects101 - he gave you good strategy idea. Torrents and warez will be good for you. Unfortunately, I don't know any gaming forums - I play AION and that's enough for me