what methods bring traffic to forums? aside from sig links, what else? does paid advertising on blogs and other website convert to active members?
My primary source of targeted traffic is youtube. Even though google sends my site more traffic, people that find my site from my youtube videos are more likely to register an account. From the numbers I have been able to figure out, if someone lands on my forum from one of my youtube videos, they are 65 times more likely to register an account then if they landed there from google. The average bounce rate for my forum is around 36%. Generic traffic from google has a bounce rate of 50 - 60 percent. Youtube traffic has a bounce rate of around 16 percent. The drawback, making the videos is very time consuming. But once you get it down, it goes by pretty quick. For one 5 minute video, I might spend 2 - 3 hours getting to location, filming, editing and uploading. And, you have to have a good digital camera, some video editing software and a high speed internet connection.
Classified Ads in niche targeted sites, social media profiling and promotion will bring more traffic to your site.