I do not get it. I have tried so hard to make my forums unique and I never get anything. No members, no posts, nothing. I have seen many members here and they make pretty basic forums and they get 100 members within the first few weeks and a good amount of posts as well. I have done plenty of promoting and it does not work like it should. My last forum is dead mainly because of most members joining for something that they will not get, thus being the reason to why I gave up on it. Seriously, what is it that I am doing incorrectly? :shake:
How do some people do it?
- Thread starter Killman
- Start date
Member activity reflects that of the staff members on a forum. The more active you are, the more active your members will be. The more active your members are, the more people will be willing to join. It's an endless cycle.
You also have to promote everywhere that you can. Don't use promotion forums... they don't help all that much. Promotion forums are great to get your forum started with exchanges and extra (temporary) members, but other than that, don't expect to get all of your members from forum promotion sites.
Have good SEO and content, get indexed by search engines. Never underestimate the power of search engines.
Use Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and other social networking platforms. Get your site up on Digg and Slashdot.
It's an endless cycle of advertising, but you have to keep doing it every day. Stay active and be patient.
You also have to promote everywhere that you can. Don't use promotion forums... they don't help all that much. Promotion forums are great to get your forum started with exchanges and extra (temporary) members, but other than that, don't expect to get all of your members from forum promotion sites.
Have good SEO and content, get indexed by search engines. Never underestimate the power of search engines.
Use Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, and other social networking platforms. Get your site up on Digg and Slashdot.
It's an endless cycle of advertising, but you have to keep doing it every day. Stay active and be patient.
MastaScribe
Up-and-Coming Sensation
Yea, the thing that works with me is I have a few real active members. Best of luck, keep up the hard work.
Re:
You can't just expect to make a cool forum, and everyone find it. You have to find the members, cause they won't find you.
Then, when they get there, YOU have to keep them entertained, until you get enough activity to where the forum can survive without you being the main activity driver.
It takes time, took me over a year; and the rewards are well worth it 🙂
Truest words right there. My forum's gests and new members mostly come from Google now. I don't even have to advertise. It took ayear to get my spot on google; and the hard work has finally paid off.Tecca said:
You can't just expect to make a cool forum, and everyone find it. You have to find the members, cause they won't find you.
Then, when they get there, YOU have to keep them entertained, until you get enough activity to where the forum can survive without you being the main activity driver.
It takes time, took me over a year; and the rewards are well worth it 🙂
Blaze Youngblood
Acquaintance
It took us 6 years before we got regular traffic and people posting daily, and this isn't our original forums. Get the staff involved, make sure the areas that haven't had posts in days or weeks are being boosted up by you and your staff. Content that sits there unchanged for months doesn't draw attention.
Tecca offered great advice, and you may even want to consider bringing on one or two new staff members that are experienced and work on 10,000+ post forums. Persistence and Patience is the best approach, and having a proactive staff contributing daily helps too. Our two forums after this time and hard work have combined for over 50,000 posts and 1,100 members. Just stick with it if you want it to work.
Tecca offered great advice, and you may even want to consider bringing on one or two new staff members that are experienced and work on 10,000+ post forums. Persistence and Patience is the best approach, and having a proactive staff contributing daily helps too. Our two forums after this time and hard work have combined for over 50,000 posts and 1,100 members. Just stick with it if you want it to work.
Digitalmods
Familiar Face
Re:
I'm going to follow your advice, hopefully we can attract more members to our forum.
Blaze Youngblood said:
I'm going to follow your advice, hopefully we can attract more members to our forum.
You have to stick to it, make sure your site looks appealing to guests, have a few comps to get a little activity, get a few of your friends to post a little, make the forum look active and others will want to join in the activity. Again perhaps buy some adsense for your forum. i think there are few for sale in the marketplace on this forum, if i remember correctly.
Re:
Thanks for the pointless comment. Its difficult to be patient after two years of being into the forum scene, it tends to get annoying. :shake:
@Tecca
There is a +rep coming your way. Great advice. :great:
The Pimped Papaya said:
Thanks for the pointless comment. Its difficult to be patient after two years of being into the forum scene, it tends to get annoying. :shake:
@Tecca
There is a +rep coming your way. Great advice. :great:
One way to do it, is to hire staff...
While you might be alone on the forumw aiting for members, when you have staff you both will be posting stuff and writing and people will join.
If there is only you, then sometimes you probably dont reply too fast or your not on a lot, or maybe your not being a god admin.
Someone joins say HEYY welcome to my forum!! sound fun, make it seem like your forum having a party all day long...
While you might be alone on the forumw aiting for members, when you have staff you both will be posting stuff and writing and people will join.
If there is only you, then sometimes you probably dont reply too fast or your not on a lot, or maybe your not being a god admin.
Someone joins say HEYY welcome to my forum!! sound fun, make it seem like your forum having a party all day long...
Like the person above me said, hire staff members. Then there are more people trying to get the place active. If the staff are lazy, don't hesitate to kick the off the team or temporarily take them off the staff. Advertise everywhere you could.
Re:
Not specifically true, i'm very active on my forum, activity from me posting every single day. The forum is still dead though.
We used to get about 10 members online at the same time every day now we get 4 if we are lucky.
Tecca said:
Not specifically true, i'm very active on my forum, activity from me posting every single day. The forum is still dead though.
We used to get about 10 members online at the same time every day now we get 4 if we are lucky.
I agree with the patience comment to an extent. Ive had my forum for 6 years and ive had some major problems, but ive never given up on it, i push it to its limits, i advertise everywhere. Up until 2 days ago i had staff who had been with me from the beginning!! I still have members who have been with Headbangers Haven for about 2 years.
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