My forum is on Proboards & we have an unspoken "I join yours, you join mine". So I acquired several Proboards members at the beginning. However, it's similar to Post Exchanges, where if you don't post on theirs, they won't on yours. I've done Packages as well as Post Exchanges to help increase activity. Getting members is easy to do, keeping ACTIVE members is another story. Everybody is on everybody else’s forum & that can cause a lot of burn-out.
So, who were your first members when you created your forum?
The first two members were the guys setting up the forum! I arrived later and brought along some people from a former who were dissatisfied with the way it was being run.
The first members me and my friend got were mostly people he knew and came over from other boards when he mentioned he had opened a forum. Besides a couple, most of that initial core group of a handful of people are still active members today.
My earliest forums were a part of my multi-author blogs and in-house writers were the members of my forums. When I created my first forum that was not a part of a blog, my first members were fake accounts that I created solely to build threads.
Most of the very first members that I had joining were rather people that I Sent PMs too that became staff to help or I did so many deals and exchanges right here on FP and so most of the members to start off with are from members from here back in 2015
The very first person to join my general chat forum when I had it was me and my parents 🙂 they were very supportive when I started my forum and would log on and help me out my Dad was a moderator to help out with anything that was needed as he was familiar with forums as well. After that it was people I knew through the VBulletin forum who became regular members as well.
