What is an effective way to gain members of a forum?

Question

I just created a website for sports and i dont have many members. Ive done about everything i can think of to do but i have not actually gained many members of the forum. It has had many hits but only about 1/16 have actually joined the forum. Any help?

Answer 1

I came across a new forum within my field the other day. The owner of the forum was running a competition to win $300 worth of goodies. Each forum posted counted as one entry into the competition. But the proviso was they had to be genuine entries not spam or trolling. So I joined...

Answer 2

Run an easy to use forum system, systems like vbulletin are daunting to the uneducated masses. phpNET and SMF are good systems to run.

Try to keep members active, people won't join a dead forum. A little bit of advertising never hurt either.

Answer 3

just keep bragging it up everywhere you go like chats and message boards. add a link to it in your email signature. also do this

★★ PROMOTE YOUR WEB SITE ★★

◙ You need to submit your site to many search engines. Search engines will not accept your site if it is listed on free-for-all list sites. They will not accept it if it is a newbie site that is about them only. Think of a subject and write about it. It can take 2 weeks to 6 months or more before they list you. Even if they do accept your site you'll need to check your listing occasionally to make certain it is still listed. If a site gets no traffic or isn't updated regularly they will delte your listing. If you are a serious webmaster you will need to read about site optimisation at http://www.searchengines.com/ Another great site is http://www.searchenginewatch.com/ Search engine submission tips (lots of info) http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/

◙ You'll find about 400 search engines here.

☞ http://dwight.clickthesky.com/search/

◙ There are web sites that claim to submit your site to hundreds of search engines at once. The only one I recommend is http://www.dmoz.org/ The other search engines use this directory to supplement their own directories. Youdd it to google here http://www.google.com/addurl/

◙ If you have a Geocities home page list it in Geocities Homepage Directory http://pages.yahoo.com/ You'll find help for that here http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/geo/gmembers/

◙ Read about Google's unique page ranking system.

☞ http://www.googleguide.com/pagerank.html

◙ Improving search engine positioning (ranking) with other search engines.

☞ http://www.google.com/search?q=improving+search+engine+rank+position

Answer 4

there is approach. You assemble a catalogue of stable spots web pages and make posting there with aback hyperlink to you. there is article writng and merchandising with classifieds etc. study all the site visitors strategies.