Will my forum ever take off?

I have had this forum for about of month, on Skiing4life.com. I am getting plenty of hits but no signups, me and the other admin post so it loooks active, what else can i do?

 

Try hiring paid forum posters and keep advertising your site.

 

Is it worth having a forum then? i dont want to pay ppl to post its for their benefit not mine

 

Do not expect too much traffic for the first year, much less the first month. If you want instant traffic, then get ready to sink a lot of money into advertising.

 

Try give some awards for best poster every week or two

 

One month is nothing. Most forums take off after a year. Until then you have to keep working adding quality content and marketing.

Find out related forums and participate there as much as you can.

 

Most (not all) forums are way too much work with not enough return.

 

Ok thanks does any1 think it has potential.?

 

I do ! It's something different, keep working with it! Skiing's awesome btw !

Maybe trade links with other sport's related site's? If there is quality content i'm thinking people will join.

 

Do some marketing for your site. Buy some ads, get people in and it will build itself...

 

People want to be where others are, no one want's to be in an empty forum. Unless, you create content, photos and cool videos so that people come to look. Be passionate yourself, don't expect anybody else to come in and build the forum for you.

Oh, and most forums never take off. How would I even know that your's existed?

 

I agree with some of the others. Yours has potential to take off but you need to work at it. Keep adding content and make it look as if there are more people already. I'm sure you have some friends who love skiing just as much as you. Get them to sign up and post a few things once in a while. Who knows, maybe they'll invite some of their friends that you don't know. Another thing I would add to what others have said about advertising. A cheaper form of advertising could be to put up flyers or business cards at a local ski lodge or store. This would be a lot cheaper than adwords and is very targeted.

Good luck!

 

Another thing I just noticed is that you need to make your sign up link more visible. Make it easy to find and put it in a couple places on the page. On the home page, you don't actually have a link to register. You should have it towards the top just like the forum does. You have to sell it, just as if you wanted people to buy something. Give them a reason to sign up.

 

Consider editing your AFresh theme, because it's really overused, so at least it will look unique.

 

Since skiing is not that popular on the net, meaning there are not that many websites, you have a good chance of making the first page of Google for popular keywords.
Try to build links and SEO your site.

Best of luck!

 

Thanks for all the responses. I have no clue how to do seo since i just started making websites in december of 09. I will try to add more buttons to register.

 

One month is nothing. Give it 12 months of posting about 30 threads and replies a day. Good quality posts with lively debate (even if you are debating with yourself!) is crucial. People make up their minds within 20 seconds of visiting a website if its for them or not. If they land on one of your threads, you have 20 seconds to grab their interest with the quality of your posts. If its rubbish posts, they click away. If its informative, interesting, quality,topical or humorous, they might stick around!
I really believe the key is to keep posting. Even after months of posting you might be seeing very little, but Google will be indexing your posts and building up a profile of your site. Search engine traffic will come, it just takes hard work. Lots of hard work.

 

Index page gives me the idea to close the browser. It's a giant youtube video image and an ad. Very unattractive.

You need a complete overhaul imho if you want this site to succeed.

And yes forums take a long time to get off the ground but in a month you should have had more activity than you do. You have 2 members other than yourself. That's really bad. I'd make a list for you of problems but it's so many it would take me an hour.

 

Yeah I agree that the homepage isn't very attractive. If you're trying to make it a cool video site or something, use WordPress to post a daily video etc. so it looks more organized. Alternatively, you could stick with a static HTML page but you'll definitely need a better one than what you currently have.

 

Content, content, content.
Keep working on the content, and slowly people should start signing up.
Getting it started is the hard part- people see its small and dont see the benefits, you struggle to make it bigger.
Its hard, but if the demand is there for your forum, you'll want to invest time and/or money into advertising.