I started my forum in July of '08 and I've been getting very low activity. It's a general chat forum and I've spent hours and hundreds of dollars running advertising it. I don't want to give up on it but I feel that it is going nowhere. What can I do to revive my forum?I am willing to pay someone to promote the forum for me, I will pay anyone a good amount for activity. If anyone would like to offer their services, please let me know what you can do and how much you are asking for. Please note that I will only pay for activity I receive, nothing in advanced. Anyone have any other tips for me? Oh and the link to my forum is : www.EliteTopics.com , let me know what you think.
Hey I remember you We've done an exchange before. What have you been spending your money on for it? Honestly if you've been spending your money right you should be getting more traffic than from what it looks..
I co own a forum with sizable numbers of members. The thing you should consider when having a general forum is the target audience or demographics.
You might want to change the look of the forum. Its a nice look but some might turn away at the beginning. Its to dark.
Okay, promote you self on myspace and youtube, make videos or tutorials. Or what gets ppls most attention is porn. So....... Im just helping. also I've notice your running ver 2.3.5 you might want to upgrade your board to a 2.3.6 just letting you know.
From what I can see your forum has a good setup. There aren't too many forums, they seem well organised and laid out. I also like the skin on the forum, there's a good balance between the dark elements (black / grey) and the bright elements such as the category headers. Having said that, I don't think dark skins suit general chat forum if i'm completely honest. Normally i've found that darker skins are more suited for gaming / hacking forums. The majority of general chat forums i've found normally have light skins that are "nothing special"...easy on the eye, no fancy graphics...quick load times etc.. I wouldn't bother spending your cash on PPC Advertising because unless you're already a well established site with an active user base, nobody who visits through an ad will join up. I'd recommend having yourself a look at the Content Creation forum. Here you can pay members (about $0.07 per post) to post on your forum, normaly they're good quality and you can get a few hundred at one time. At this this way you know you're getting something with your money...using PPC Advertising (or other, not really sure what you're spending at the moment) is a gamble as you can't guarantee posts for your money. One last thing i'd point out, try to filter out the religious adverts from your adsense. Religion is a very sensative thing and can be enough to make people turn away from your forum. Sad I know, but it's the harsh reality. Best of luck
Thanks for the good advice pixelraider. I've already tried paid posting and it didn't work out too well. I'm looking for a way to get loyal members that will post and have some thoughtful conversations. And I can't really find any light skins that I like other than the invision default.
Way too many forums. Like for example, for sports, you could put all the subforums into Sports area. Same with other areas. That way, you will look more active. When you get more members, you can make it more diverse.
i agree with fattony. slim down the forums a bit. you can always expand and move threads around as you grow.
Guys, I also thank you for the advice. I started "Beyond Discussion" couple of weeks ago. Beyond Discussion is basically a all discussion forum, and I have the same problem as "error47".