I just started a forum! How can i have more users and more activity on it. Just to tell you, i have no money to advertise. So any tips, please?
Try to put the forum links in your signature, and be active on the forums having similar subject as you have. Good luck G!
Try Forum Post Exchanges with other forums... There are tons looking to help post on your forum for this!
Start with yourself and any friends you can convince to participate daily. I even recommend you create a handful of secondary accounts and talk with yourself. Create that Google food even if artificial it can benefit you long-term. Create social networking accounts. Begin interlinking them and your site. Work day in and day out for months if you must. Most forums fail because admins give up and can't handle the required workload. It's more intense than any other site. It can take a year or more for a forum to take off and it's success is never guaranteed. Also depending on genre and your own ability a forum may have a cap on it's success. If you niche is too small you'll never grow beyond a few hundred members. However if it's too broad it may not be attractive enough to those looking for a niche discussion. So choose wisely. Also choose a topic you are knowledgable in. Something you can easily sound like an expert and discuss every day. You have to be able to answer questions and offer strong replies to new members. Probably more of an answer than you need but read it well.
Thanks for those wonderful tips.My forum's topic is mainly Computers and Support. I also deal with a webmaster section. Very soon ill post the link here for you all see.
To me there is nothing worse than a webmaster forum owner asking webmaster advice on another webmaster forum. You have no businss running a webmaster community imho if you yourself are not a webmaster.
Completely agree. As a forum owner of many years now, if i didn't know what i was talking about i never could have got it off the ground.
Thanks Rizzo and RectangleMan I have been a webmaster for 4 years now, but this is my first forum and I have no experience running a forum although i can talk a lot about webmasters. Hence I was asking.
participate on blogs! once you get a decent amount of members to join, start a contest and advertise it on all the other communities you're active on.
Get your name out there. Post exchanges have helped me get some new content on my site. Join sites and put your link in the sig (as long as their rules allow it). You can't just expect them to come out of nowhere.
I don't quite agree with this statement. Successful communities can easily be built on tight budgets.
I think im an seo expert. probably good seo will give better results and i also think that its more important than advertising or any other promotion.