we have started our new forum, http://www.webmastersroom.com we are getting members join about 5 a day at the momemt, site has been running from 1st of this month. the site is having a good amount of posts daily. but want it to grow much quicker. does anyone have any ideas they could let us no, that would help our forum grow at a much quicker rate, (much quicker than it is) this is what we are doing at the moment building backlinks, please let me no your thoughts thanks steve
offer incentives for people referring others to the forum. have contests. have a site to go along with it and use the site to drive traffic to the forum. offer free downloads, but require registration to use them.
thanks for the comment disgust, i would offer incentives but to be honest i dont no what to offer, if i said a $ for every user they get joined the site, that could get very expensive. do u have any ideas? i have set up a contest, to try and get members, but to be honest dont look like its gonna go well, even though i am giving away $2000 thanks for your feedback
it doesn't need to be money. people will do crazy things for even small incentives; offer free ebooks, enhanced access to tools, special forum privs, etc.
Crap. I was going to warn you not to do the contests. They are a big mistake. I've got a $500 contest and so far it's not done anything to help my forums except get a few young kids (who are not eligible for the contest anyway) spamming my forums trying to get extra entries into the contest. Big mistake, and a waste of $500. If you can gracefully back out of the $2000, I'd advise you spend your money on more effective advertising. One thing I've noticed, is that when I have a bunch of registered users online, my guest are more likely to convert into registered users. I personally feel that using paid posters in bulk can jump start your forums and help convert your guest into regular users. That's just my experience though.
again, you can do contests that are quite effective without spending any money at all. find something your users want. use that for the contests. all of the contests I've run have no money involved at all, and they cost me nothing... yet they still work. rather well, too.
again thanks for the feedback, i will come up with some sort of referal system, just gotta think of something to offer now. the contest i have done is similar to the one directorycontest.com ,if there is not enough entries i will perspone it for now,and spend the money elsewhere. thanks again steve
perhapse 30 posts and you get a free webmastersroom email address? 10 posts a month means thy get a free link from your homepage for a month?
also just seen your site, its the phpbb standard skin, i think you need to make it look more unique, perhapse draw some inspiration from you logo? If i go to a site and it doesnt look busy and/or unique i wouldnt join, thats probably quite shallow, but your doing a site geared towards webmasters who see phpbb all day long possibly on their own site
thanks for the feedback tony, your right about the skin, i,m gonna tear this apart today, gonna be fun.
Forget the incentives! Simply promote your forum by illustrating and promoting the benefits of using your forum! You might not gain quantity, but you'll gain quality members! I, for one, am going over to join! I like your concept and what you're doing. Incentive fly-bys and/or drive-bys don't ever turn out to be loyal and/or quality members anyways. Don't offer a free email address!!!! That's nuts! They'll just use it for spam or reciprocal spam! Don't do it!
Many Forums offer a place where you are allowed to Advertise your forum. I usually go forum to forum looking for that and advertise it up(sometimes there require post count). It's free, simple, and once you got enough members your forum will start selling itself.
Yes I think so - I know so! I've been working from home and have been owning my own home based businesses for over 8 years now. Quality is so much better than quantity, trust me! You have an excellent idea and concept. Trust yourself with this! You're going to go a long ways with your site! Believe in yourself and your work! You've created a super good site with relevant content. Believe in it and yourself. Promote it as such! You don't want a bunch on trash and/or incentive trash joining your site anyways, do you? Of course not! All's they'll try and do is find a way in order to try and advertise and/or promote their trash! Trust me - I've been there and done that! Incentive nothing! Believe in yourself, your idea and concept and go forward. Quality memberships are and will take you so much further that quantity incentive trash ever will. Just my opinion. Hope this helps!
Find a good community leader. Someone who already has standing in the niche, or has the potential to earn it. Have them bring their friends in. Have him define the purpose and be a face for hte community.
why would they spam it? they have to get a certain number of posts 1st, so you will be ale to tell by their posts if they will use it for spam, hopefully if they have say 50 posts they will become quite good members of the forum and so wouldnt want to see anything bad happen to it
if you are running a posts contest on your forum, you can have some sort of a quality control, you yourself can verify the quality of the posts of members once they reach the specified no. of posts and apply for the prize. You can also assign the job of verifying the quality of posts to a few respected members of the forum. This will ensure that only quality posts are rewarded. Just my opinion...
I like Disgusts' idea of offering incentives to refer people. If you know for certain you are getting a lot of hits, but not many signups, you are 'almost' on the brink of luring them one step further into signing up if you have more members. To encourage this you could use a forum posting service or just create some fake members yourself. Yes, this is slightly misleading, but it is only a beginning solution. After all, providing the people who have signed up are getting legit answers to their questions, does it really matter if in the beginning they're answers are in fact all from the same person posing as different people? People tend to avoid empty forums like the plague so this may be your only option, although it may be an ethical issue you wish to circumvent, it is entirely your choice at the end of the day. A small deception to start off a great and thriving forum isn't going to see you rotting in hell, after all.
thanks for everyones feedback on this, i greatly appreciate it, i have changed the design now abit, please let me no your thoughts on it now, or does it still look to much like a phpbb standard, constructive critism please. for people new to this thread, website is here http://www.webmastersroom.com thanks steve