How to Attract Users to a New Forum

[Extreme24]

I'm in the same dilemma right now. Getting a forum going is hard work. You must advertise it somewhere outside of your site, but beware, the way you advertise your forum reflects upon it.

Don't spam other forums advertising. It just makes your site look bad. For now all's I can say is keep on posting news, posting messages, create a few fake accounts so it doesn't look empty, keep advertising else where like in sigs on other forums, and keep on posting in both theirs and yours.

It'll take a while but give it some time. I'm sure you'll make it soon All forums have to have a few handful members already there to get things going. Just try and get a few dedicated people there

You must also ALWAYS love the subject of your site. If an Admin of a site doesn't care for the subject anymore, the site will most probably fail (unless he/she's getting paid to run the site.)

[narendra64]

Some forums gives much earnings.
So all are atract to those sites.
Some give 3 BK$ per post. but some are giving only $1 per 100 posts.

[benjaminjd_92]

to attract ppl do good in that

[sPooky_hKs]

you can pay for posts or make some contests ..

[jeremyshaw]

Originally Posted by Drew

phpBB is too easy to hack into.
Perl scripts are all over for exploits to phpBB boards.

Look at this :
http://www.google.com/search?q=hacked+by+sobe
Not gonna say if that is me or not , but those are all phpBB boards.

I heard someone talk about them in this thread.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/secur...tenced_to.html


there is always justice! (hope someone didn't already post this)

[imported_SageMother]

Contests or incentives based on numbers of posts per month is probably the best way to go. It keep interest up and you can provide rewards that are not too costly, but also serve to advertise or generate upgrade sales for the product you are pushing .

[ACCER]

I agree that contests and incentives are the way to go. But don't set it to the point where others don't share the link because they want a better chance at winning!

[mickmel]

I've just build a new site to help with this problem. It's free to use and there are no ads anywhere on it -- it's just a service to other forum admins.

PostSwappers.com

The basic idea is this:

- It shows a list of all of the forums that people have added.
- As you post on other forums in there, yours will move to the top of the list. - The higher you are on the list, the more other people will post on yours.
- As other admins post on yours, you will slowly move back down the list (unless you keep posting on other boards).

Give it a shot and let me know what you think.

[john190]

I good way of starting a forum would be to get paid posters. Pay them to post say 15 posts each and then all of the rest of their posts will not be paid. The paid posts are really an incentive to get them signed up and have a feel of the forums.

Get some posts in the forum as no one likes to join a forums that looks empty.

[mickmel]

A good contest can go a long way. I saw one forum that got over 10,000 replies in a single thread doing one. It can work wonders if done correctly.