I am totally mixed up. I have a FreeLance Forum, where people can buy or sell their services for free, eg programmers, writers ect. They can also sell their website advertisements, which we have under catagories, also for free. I have left two posts on DP telling members what we do and to post their services on our forum. Not one did, and very little looked at the posts. Why not, its not a con, or for them to pay money before they post, what am I doing wrong, I thought I would have tonne's of sign ups. (As the rules say on DP, I post on the Freebe section) Any help? Thanks
I think one of the problems might be that there are a lot of other established sites that offer a lot more traffic - which benefits both the buyer and seller when it comes to services. Sites like elance have a payment gateway with escrow, feedback, and charge a relative small fee for the protection it gives. As with any forum, getting people to sign up and participate is very hard at first. If you can get it to take off, then it can snowball into a very active forum. Many people choose to promote by running a contest, paying for posters and running paid advertising. Unless you have something very very unique, it's likely going to take a lot more work then making a few posts. Good luck.
I would have thought it was unique in the following area's Totally free to buy or sell. Contact details of both buyer and seller, so they can contact each other direct. Sell website advertisement's, under catagorys ,again for free. (I know it dose not really apply here) Get sales agents or agencies again totally for free. What had guys got to loose by posting on the forum, nothing, but still they did not?
Even though its free it takes time to get something like this up and running. Many people may be concerned that the site will not be around for long and they don't want to waste their time. Keep at and don't give up. Like you say, it's free so there is nothing to lose by signing up, other than some of your time. Work on getting some pagerank for your site - currently you don't appear to be in the index (PR is showing as grey for me), this may put some people off - especially webmasters.
you can find the problem behind it if you think. Why more people are there in DP ? Yes the thing is that DP is crowded with tons of people.There are many who looks for services and there are many who offer them. To get your forum more members you need a lot of traffic first. You can attract member to jpoin your forum by different promotion methods.
Hi Lofty, yes the forum has no page rank its only three weeks old, but I am working on that. With out a doubt nobody wants to waste their time but what would it take, 5 minutes to sign up and write your post with a link, about your service. LWS. I agree with you, but even after 3 weeks you can become down hearted, but yes I will keep going. Priya, promotions is a good idea, but like a lot of new webmasters funds are tight (did I say tight, you need to have money to be tight) sorry I ment I have no money. But thanks to you all for the advice and encouragement.
Keep talking it up, promotion takes time. Basic advertising fact: few people buy the first time they hear about something. You need to get it in front of them repeatedly (even if it's free) Your site is a pretty good idea. It would cover the majority of what I use DP for anymore.
I am on a few forums and use my signaturer. I only do good posts and hopefully people will come because I dont spam, and the posts or topics are normally good, but that brings me to another problem you could spend years filling up other peoples forums with quality posts. I found a list, last night of forums that take signaturers, there's thousands and I wont go onto a forum make one commint to leave my signature and never appear again, if I join a forum I like to be active (I would like people to be active on mine) So now I am a member of 6 forums, that are relavent to mine and spend half the night posting, so my signature is getting out there, but with all the posting on other forums am I neglecting (Sorry for the spelling) my own.
Collegekid, hope you liked the forum, thanks for checking it out. Proximity. Budget, budget, budget. Of course your right, I would pump any money I made on the site back onto the site, but its the catch 22, you make money to put into promotion, if you have enough visitors, but you can only get visitors if you promote.
Adacprogramming, where are you looking at putting automotive, as its not really a freelance subject, unless you have a website that you want to sell links or advertisements on, then of course no problem, thanks for your interest.
Adacprogramming, Automotive catagory is set up. in the website advertisement section. Thanks a million, hope you sell from it.
Nobody wants free advertising... on your site. That's the problem. What do they benefit? Nothing. There is no pagerank, no link juice and nobody reading the site to begin with so they're just shouting into empty space. What do they lose? 5 minutes of their life.
yea its gonna be tough to recruit marketers that realize there is no page rank for now. however maybe you should target newbies that are just starting out looking for any and all free traffic.
Taylorwilson, if everyone like you think its a waste of time to lose 5 minutes of your life, to advertise your business in a post, then no forums would ever have started, as all sites start with a page rank of zero. How many sites advertise on directories that have a page rank of zero, millions If Google took that stance, that they would only put adsense on sites, that have a page rank, your site Testmac.net would have no adsense, as its has a page rank of zero. Are you telling me nobody is reading that site. Tiger 325, good idea, I just have to figure out where to find them.