Getting Members

[Rebel]

My forum is probably on it's last legs now. It's barely active and we just cannot get people to join and be active. People do randomly join every now and then but that's about it. One of my admins is about to leave and the other admin guy is being paid to be there and start activity ( even if he is active...the members are not). These members see us online every day and just by myself I've posted nearly 500 threads and nearly 1000 posts. We're just sinking! I've even have paid advertisements on Facebook and Stumble Upon. I'm just sinking money now too. I even have the forum in my sig at another debate forum...which is probably risking being banned for spamming (although I do post on topic). I just don't know anymore.

What do I do to get this forum going?? I don't want the forum to die but I'm running out of options.

 

[VirusZero]

This is the hardest part of owning any sort of site. (Doesn't really matter the genre either.) Every site struggles with gaining members to some degree.

There are no guarantees, no secret tricks and no proven methods. All anyone can do is post, keep posting, advertise however they can, post more and keep trying. It might take years for a forum to take off. It might never take off and become wildly popular. But you won't know unless you keep going.

The best thing I can offer is to ask your members what they want to see. Maybe they have some insights into how they think that site could improve. (You might not get very many answers, but it's always worth a shot.)
Other than that, just keep pushing forward.

Also, I wouldn't worry about money for advertisements since unless you're spending a lot of money you probably aren't going to have any real noticeable effects. Instead it might be better to divert that money into paid posters or something.

 

[Gamer Outpost]

I have a few tips that may or may not work.

Ask your friends to help keep the forum active. They'll be dedicated members and they can spread the word to their friends.

Don't pay for advertising if it's not working. It's better to join other forums like this one and having a banner or link to your site in your signature. Then just post a ton, if you get banned, so be it. Join another. Every post you make is like an advertisement. Post in the popular threads.

Make a small square avatar with the url to your site in it. have Patriotic on one line, then Voices, then .com. People may see it and type it into their address bar just to see what your site is about. Better than nothing, especially if you're on your last legs.

Social media is your friend. I've found that using Twitter for promoting my blogs yields a decent conversion/click rate, as 0.5-2% of your followers will click on links you post, depending on who your followers are of course.

Find others with new/struggling sites and see if you can workout a partnership. Maybe you post on their forum and they post on yours. You advertise their site on your site in vice versa.

I hope that helped, I'd join your forum now if I wasn't so busy. Maybe I will later. If you'd like a partnership or something with my new site, just PM me.

 

[CyboCraft]

My forum is not that active either, but I don't post everyday cause its a minecraft server community, I need to get another minecraft server

 

[Shawn Gossman]

My forum is probably on it's last legs now. It's barely active and we just cannot get people to join and be active. People do randomly join every now and then but that's about it. One of my admins is about to leave and the other admin guy is being paid to be there and start activity ( even if he is active...the members are not). These members see us online every day and just by myself I've posted nearly 500 threads and nearly 1000 posts. We're just sinking! I've even have paid advertisements on Facebook and Stumble Upon. I'm just sinking money now too. I even have the forum in my sig at another debate forum...which is probably risking being banned for spamming (although I do post on topic). I just don't know anymore.

What do I do to get this forum going?? I don't want the forum to die but I'm running out of options.

You run a debate forum right?

If I were in your shoes, I'd focus on better topics that are not found elsewhere. This means you will have to research a lot of other popular debate forums, watch and read the news, stay up to date with the debate issues and actively promote your content.

If you are having an issue with promoting on rival forums, try social media. Everyone is on Facebook and Twitter these days, use the social cloud to your advantage and start being as active on it as you are on your forum. Join in on debates, start them, connect with others, invite people to your forum. Post topic links rather than the main forum link so people can be encouraged to join so they can reply to something instead having to look for topics on their own from the forum's homepage.

I will say this, debate forums are a bloated niche but don't let that scare you off... I bet it took me 5,000 posts (that is 5,000 of my own posts) on my admin forum before things started taking off on their own. You just have to ensure that you forum in the bloated niche stays active and has unique content as frequently as possible.

Stay strong and good luck 🙂