I recently started a new forum on general chat. Now I have a budget of around $100 to promote. Does anyone got an idea on whats the best way to spend it to get more active members. The place is already pretty active but few registrations (27 members so far) Forums: http://www.rootforum1.com
A good idea will be to hire posters at maybe $0.01 per post and $0.02 per thread. You can have some decent 500-1000 posts like this. I'm sure it willl attract more users with the increased forum activity.
the price is more like 10 cents per post, no one will post for 1 cent a post, but yes it is a good idea to do that.
You might wish to consider investing that $100 in developing something unique to offer on your forum (something that the other 10^6 general forums do not offer.) Once you have a unique aspect to focus on, *then* run an ad campaign concentrating on your unique offering. Just my personal opinion, but there are far, far too many general forums for a generic ad campaign to have any effect. Directory submissions you can do yourself for free - there are semi-automated tools that help make it a relatively quick and easy task. 90% of paid posting is of limited use, it is mostly just trashy background hum that you might need to get SEs to visit your forum a little more frequently when starting out - but you are past that point, focus now on quality. If you get lucky and find the few paid posters that can offer real value to your forum then it helps, but you could spend over $100 finding those.
You might want to offer some freebies in exchange of lets say 10 posts. People here at DP have often used such techniques to attract users to their new forums. You can offer deals like: 2,000 free smilies/fonts/recipes to someone who posts 20 posts on the forum. 3,000 free smilies/fonts/recipes to someone who posts 30 posts on the forum. and so on. And also use the $100 for paid posters.
If you simply want an active community......... Get friends, family, and whomever to come to your site.... Get ready to work hard. If you are here at DP, you are not working on your board! Post and post and post and post, this is call I can tell you and the best advice for someone that just wants to build a community and is not worried about PR. PR does come later..... With $100, I'd look at not doing much except buying running shoes. Don't waste your money on paid posters or offer $.10 for a post. Reason being, people will post ridiculous crap and you have to pay them.... Separate the post into various groups and offer $1.00 for good high quality posts. Don't go higher than a dollar, but if you do, it works in your favor. $1.00 $.50 $.10 A breakdown of how to give out cash. Offer the $.01 post to someone who tried to post good, but their try was not good enough........ A consolation prize.........lmao. I warn you about the paid posters there have been tons of complaints about them.......
Get some paid posters who post good content. Most paid posters post SPAM Make it good in SEO and rbing it to the top fr the specific keywords..
i can add a link to my site for about 300-600 unique views per month for $10/month pm for more details if you want cheers
I wouldnt start a forum on "general" chat, its 100 times better to pick a topic so you can target specific keywords with your domain name which is like 30-50% of your SEO right there.