My forums are struggling to get the first few active members. As of now, we have 4 members including me and I'm the only active one. I've advertised via Twitter, Facebook, word of mouth, and I'm even running a BuySellAd on this site. No one seems to care about it. Any ideas?
Attracting a userbase is a gradual thing, they won't all come at once. They will build up over time.
For now, your forum structure looks too simplified (Everything under one category) and you should also add forum descriptions. I would definitely focus on filling the forums up with unique and helpful content, try writing tutorials. Tech keywords are heavily searched for in google and there are literally MILLIONS of long tail keywords you could rank for so do some research and find some decent LTK's and write tutorials around them. If you are writing about things that people are searching for you will get traffic and some will become members.
Thanks! I created my first tutorial over at https://mytechforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=20. I'm going to be adding more as I think of them, and I am also going to be adding descriptions to the forums.
You've got a good theme some decent sections. However, like D said, it looks like you're lacking a bit of "finesse." All of your forums are in one glob and there's not much to be seen.
I would also recommend a mod such as Last Topic Title to give more information on your index.
It's a good idea to ask some questions to our Review Team by requesting a questionnaire when you have enough FP$! They're great at that stuff. 🙂
A tech forum without tech ... You need to spiff it up a bit. There are no topics to start a discussion, and most people are followers, not leaders. Put some effort into that if you want it to fly.
You're not doing too badly. See in your mind the number of users you want, and get them by any means. With my own forum it was, and still is now, one by one, quite slow. You'll look back at the end of the year (if you work hard) and feel very encouraged with how things have built up. The good thing is, a number of people do not mind joining a small forum. It's those people you need to find. Not easy, but they're there. Think of the 7 that are on there..
