Money as a Necessity for Promotion

[Jason76]

I think a small amount is. I mean, I see at least one person (unnamed for politeness) who is talking of promoting to friends - or I think anyone where he doesn't have to fork out cash. However, though, it's a dead-end street I think. I mean, I have paid Facebook, though a hated company in many ways, to promote a page and group - and traffic to my site is/or will certainly benefit. I mean, already I'm getting a few enthusiastic members to my actual drumming forum, not just the group.

OK, well, it's tough to raise money - but even a small job, working maybe around a disability thing or something, can be done.

 

[Nomad]

In order to make your forum success you need traffic. Traffic can be organic, referral or direct. In order to receive organic traffic, your site must be optimized for search engines. If you do not know SEO, you will have to hire experts and this cost money. You can promote on social media for referral traffic. On social media, you can do free promotion, however, free promotion does not help much in terms of generating traffic. Therefore, you will have to use paid promotion. Marketing and promotion needs money.

 

[lucycarter]

If you are expert in SEO then you don't have to spend money. You can do it by yourself. But promotion on social media require a good amount of money. You can also do free promotion on social media but it will not be much help. One of the best advertising method is google ads and it will certainly cost you money.

 

[Jason76]

If you are expert in SEO then you don't have to spend money. You can do it by yourself. But promotion on social media require a good amount of money. You can also do free promotion on social media but it will not be much help. One of the best advertising method is google ads and it will certainly cost you money.

I doubt if someone could score the links needed for good SEO metrics these days. Well at least, they couldn't without paying.

 

[overcast]

If you are expert in SEO then you don't have to spend money. You can do it by yourself.

This is not true. There is no such thing as expert in SEO.

 

[Jason76]

Free promotion could work given certain environments/niches - but I don't have enough trust in it, so that's why I took out a $5,000 loan.

Take, for instance, trying to get students to see the math forum at a college. No doubt - that would get some people - but it's not the amount of action I need. But I've been there and done that when I started marketing. Well, it worked to get one-on-one live music lesson students. It would be way slower than paid ads - but it can work. I got probably 10 students using very cheap newspaper ads and bulletin board ads (back around 2000).

 

[Jon]

You can promote without a monetary commitment, however, it's likely not going to take you very far in terms of large scale exposure. To grow rapidly with new registrations, page views, and posts/comments it's going to take a fairly large investment. The biggest problem is tackling the competition and mastering your SEO, these take not just money, but a large sum of time and focus.

So I'd say yes, unfortunately money is a necessity when it comes to promoting your site.

 

[Jason76]

You can promote without a monetary commitment, however, it's likely not going to take you very far in terms of large scale exposure. To grow rapidly with new registrations, page views, and posts/comments it's going to take a fairly large investment. The biggest problem is tackling the competition and mastering your SEO, these take not just money, but a large sum of time and focus.

So I'd say yes, unfortunately money is a necessity when it comes to promoting your site.

Not just money - but skill. I mean, when I first started back in the 2000, I fell for scams like FFA blasters, expired or maybe faulty biz leads etc..

 

[overcast]

Yes lack of money leads to the only option of promoting in forum and other social media.

 

[Jason76]

Cheap traffic (from redirected domains, bots, pop-unders) seems to be the scam that gets the most people. I hope FP doesn't use it. I mean, the numbers are pretty big lately.