Any other ideas to get new members?

[Commander]

I am trying to promote my forum, called Web Hosting Forum.
Now I think I'm doing pretty well so far for a 2 week old forum.
I started by paying people to post X amount of posts and topics.
Then I went on to join Postloop and was pleased to get accepted.
Since then I've been posting around here and there to earn points. 😎
I've recently had to start buying points as I'm getting lots of subscribers.
My points are going down quicker than they're going up. So Postloop works.
But my concern now, after reaching over 100 topics and nearly 700 posts is:

1. I don't really want to pay out $49 every week or so for a batch of 500 points.
Because, seriously, that's how fast my points are depleting. To give an example:
I purchased 500 points three days ago and I'm already down to 200 points. 😕
I have made posts on forums I've subscribed to so that it refills some points.
But within an hour those points are gone again. It's getting kind of crazy. 😛
I've limited my forum to 5 posts per day, for every Postloop subscriber.
I've also required a minimum rating of 4.5/5 to subscribe to my forum.
But I'm still getting a lot of subscribers. Good quality ones which is good.
To be honest, I'm happy to see that my forum is so popular on Postloop.
But I'm concerned that this Postloop system just costs too much money.

What I need is to find members who are willing to be active, well, for free.
I've got to the stage now, after 66 members and nearly 700 posts, where:

1. I have enough content going to participate in discussions.
2. There is clear signs of activity on the forum for a good chat.

I have also created incentives such as a $100 posting contest.
And rewarding active members with free top level domain names.
Plus, as of today, active members can get free banner advertising.

I'm also concerned that when Postloop runs out of points, which it will do very soon no doubt, that the Postloopers will stop posting in my forum because they no longer get anything out of it (which I can understand as they're on Postloop for the same reason I am)...BUT...I do need to now find ways to get active members who are just willing to be active, well, for the sake of being active. Any ideas?

I'm sure this question is asked quite a lot so I'd appreciate some experienced feedback. 😎

My forum: http://www.webhostingforum.org.uk/

 

[J Greig]

Why don't you disable your forum on PostLoop until you get your points into the thousands. Save them up and enable it again when you have a good amount of points. It seems impractical to keep it open and to spend that much each week.

Plus, with that $49 a week, I'd suggest you invest it in your forum, and I don't mean by getting more posts etc. Remember, it's about quality not quantity.

 

[Sam]

The biggest issue I see with your forum is the conflict of interest. I don't ever remember seeing a WebHostingTalk owner advertising their services but you do here: http://www.webhostingforum.org.uk/threa ... /#post-682

The issue I see with that is no hosting provider can hope to gain clients if you are advertising- people will go with a trusted administrator over a trusted community member. Thus webhosts are unlikely to be active there.

 

[Commander]

The biggest issue I see with your forum is the conflict of interest. I don't ever remember seeing a WebHostingTalk owner advertising their services but you do here: http://www.webhostingforum.org.uk/threa ... /#post-682

The issue I see with that is no hosting provider can hope to gain clients if you are advertising- people will go with a trusted administrator over a trusted community member. Thus webhosts are unlikely to be active there.

Web hosting owners can promote their services in the marketplace.
I didn't post that response to advertise my services but to be helpful.
It just so happened that, in this particular case, my services are handy.
If any other provider deemed their service to be handy they can post too.

In all honesty, sambling, I don't believe this answer of yours to be much help. But thanks for trying though. This forum isn't just about advertising services but it's also about discussing services, getting support for issues, learning new things. If I wanted it to be specifically a promotion forum I'd have made it so. Instead it's a web hosting forum which has sections for promotion. The main point of this forum is to provide support and discussions on web hosting related topics as a whole, as I'm sure that after reading all the 100+ topics there you'll see just what I mean. 😉

@J Grieg. Thousands of points in Postloop would require thousands of posts on other people's forums. I simply do not have the time to post this amount. 🙁 at my current rate of Postloop subscribers, 1000 points would be depleted in less than 2 weeks. So unless I post like a robot, it won't be much help. 🙁

 

[J Greig]

Why are you so intent on getting a lot of posts/topics? If you create informational and quality content, surely that is much more of an incentive to people visiting your forum than thousands of posts which are short and meaningless.

 

[Commander]

Why are you so intent on getting a lot of posts/topics? If you create informational and quality content, surely that is much more of an incentive to people visiting your forum than thousands of posts which are short and meaningless.

I do agree with this concept. But it's always nice to have ongoing activity.
If possible, you see, I'd like to achieve both. But, yes, you have a point. 😉