Are promotion forums as effective as we think

Over the last couple of weeks I have been thinking a lot about how promotion forums work and how they are effective. I would of course love to think promotion forums are the most effective way of advertising forums, websites and blogs, but I do have some points I would like to cover.

Promotion forums came about around 3 years ago, I my self joined a lot of them around that time, they where as you know a big hit! People joined at once, having found it hard to get members before introduction of promotion forums. Services such as basic promotion where you will post a link to your website or forum and a description of your website or forum, while effective in some ways I think its dependent on who's on the promotion forum as to who will go to your forum.

Continue reading…

Our latest instalment comes from long time FP member, sbfc, admin of the popular and cleverly named forum ...Convo Corner.

So, let's get sbfc out of the corner, and get this convo rolling.

Where did the idea, and motivation come from when getting Convo Corner up and running?

Very good question. The idea I think was the thought of running a chat community... I really liked the thought of it and the fact you can discuss anything and because to be 100% honest, I love running forums . Also the motivation is seeing people post on my site and satisfying people with a friendly, mature community.

What do you consider the best aspect about your forum?

It's hard to single out one best aspect. The staff are absolutely fantastic to work with, the community is friendly and the general lack of any flame wars/complaints.

Continue reading…

Have you ever felt like you have a great idea and want to start a forum about it? Trust me, I know that feeling! However, starting a forum is more than the move of the moment. It requires time to think and organize your thoughts. Weeks and even Months can go into organizing these thoughts. This blog series, Starting a Forum, will serve as a guide for all of you adventurous Web Developers out there, living in the heat of the moment.

Continue reading…

Hey all,

I'm very happy to announce that FP's Blog has returned!

As you can see, there hasn't been any Blog posts for the past 4-5 months, this is due to the fact the mod that we use broke. Over this time we had people asking quite regularly whether the blog was going to return or not, so i'm happy to say we've fixed it. Continue reading…

After reading this topic on the forum it has made me think about how well it works for forums.

I have used many traffic exchanges over the years to promote many things. I have used them to promote forums and overall the results have been poor in my time using them. When browsing one of them and if you actually look at the sites you will notice that they are all mainly 1 type of sites being promoted. They are money making sites. Whether they are sites selling "make $1,000,000 in 24 hours" books or just Pay To Click (PTC) sites, they are all similar types of sites. People mainly use them to promote affiliate links in order to allow them to make money and build their downlines. People also use them to promote other traffic exchanges as it is a good promotion technique. If people are using 1 traffic exchange they would be interested in other potentially better ones. That is similar to the people surfing. They mostly all share an interest of making money on the internet. That means that they like looking for other ways to make money. I personally have got quite a few referrals from traffic exchanges for PTC sites that i am part of.

Continue reading…

One thing that leads to alot of forums failing to "take off" and become active is that they lack anything that makes them unique and that makes them stand out from the others.

People always say it is hard to be unique which is quite often true although there are always new unique things you can think of if you think hard enough and get ideas from elsewhere.

Continue reading…

In order to encourage guests to sign up, the forum has to catch the guests eye and make them carry on looking at the site and maybe sign up. The main way to catch the guests attention is to make the forum attractive.

The main ways to do this is as follows:-

* Have a nice looking style. Make sure it is not too bright and not too dark either. If possible try and have more then 1 style available as that can be a good promotional point so when people visit they might think i hate this style although if i sign up i could use their other one instead. Try to stay away from using the soft-wares default forum style as well as these tend to be overused and makes it look like not much time has been spent on the forum by the owner.
Continue reading…

One of the main things people forget when making and promoting their forum is guests. Guests are what members start out like before they register. It is important to keep this in mind when making your forum and promoting it as the site will have to be appealing of the people visiting won’t sign up.

One major thing people do is restrict the guest access. That is fine to prevent them from seeing profiles, member list, who is online and posting posts and topics. It is not good to hide all the forums from guests or restrict what they can see in the forums. As a member your forum may look good with loads of forums and loads of good posts and content but how will the guests which are your future members see what your forum has to offer if the see a blank forum?

Continue reading…