Site has been open for a year, still hardly any members!

[jdab]

Hi guys, my site will have been open a year tomorrow, yet the forum still has just over 100 members, I've started buying posts and doing domain giveaways etc, but how can I get members who will stick around?

Also, I opened a blog which took A LOT of effort, yet we are still not getting much activity :/

Here's the link: http://www.LevelUnlocked.net & http://www.LevelUnlocked.net/forum

 

[Damo]

Instead of opening your own blog - why not merge with a website that already has a blog (but not a forum) and a small user base like yourself?

This way you can just concentrate on the forums whilst a blogger blogs on.

 

[jdab]

Instead of opening your own blog - why not merge with a website that already has a blog (but not a forum) and a small user base like yourself?

This way you can just concentrate on the forums whilst a blogger blogs on.

Hmm, well I really liked the idea of a blog, so I made the blog the main part of the site with an additional forum.

 

[Damo]

Hmm, well I really liked the idea of a blog, so I made the blog the main part of the site with an additional forum.

We can all like ideas. But it’s how these ideas are executed that matters.

If this blog is giving you satisfaction then carry right on with it. However if your just doing the blog in some vain attempt to attract more activity to the forum then it might be time to reconsider something else if it's not working. At the moment it seems your taking far too much on.

However its great that your trying to adjust that by trying to get more staff via the job centre on here. Good luck!

 

[jdab]

Yeah it's a lot for me to do, I'm basically doing all the articles, our writers have been pretty inactive so I'm having to keep up with it all myself. And the forum is doing okay, I'd just like some more bloggers to take some of the load off my shoulders.

 

[Victor Leigh]

Here's an idea.

Open your blog for guest bloggers. The condition is that they must have a certain level of posts on your forum. The incentive is that they can put their own ads and affiliate links in their guest blog posts.

 

[Shahrier]

Wow, 1 year and only that many posts? Well, you need to definitely do some post exchanges at the least. All I see is a lack of effort.

 

[hcfwesker]

The old saying ... If you make it, they will come ...

IS WRONG!

Your entire first year of running your own forum, if you expect it to do much, you have to advertise daily, even do some post exchanges with other members to bring in some kind of activity. You have to create topics daily, reply to members posts daily to keep interests for the members that are there. Post on other like forums with your sig link and build backlinks to your site to help build your google ranking so your site can be found by people randomly searching your forum genre on search engines.

Stop doing contests to attract members. That just brings in the wrong crowd, imo.

 

[jdab]

Wow, 1 year and only that many posts? Well, you need to definitely do some post exchanges at the least. All I see is a lack of effort.

I'm not really lacking in effort, I try a lot. The board was reset so about 1000 posts were lost. And I have college and a job so I cannot constantly be on.

 

[Luke]

Don't dwell over the member count, I'd rather have 10 active members than 100 inactive accounts. 😉

 

[IAAM Radio]

All being up very good points but the big one is ZINC's comment.


"I'd rather have 10 active members than 100 inactive accounts."

This is spot on correct, having lots of acocunts is one thing but if they are not active, that sends a bad signal to potential new members.

 

[Harvey M.]

I think if you were to pick a slightly more appealing theme, you could score some more visitors and some that might be more enticed to stick around for longer.