How to build traffic for a community site?

I just looked at your site

are you spending 200-300 a week in dollars ? so about $1200 a month ?

if so then you might be better of spending that on adwords if all your getting in return is about 5 visits a day.

One area that any new site can benefit from is by tapping into already established communities -

Join some health related forums, facebook groups and circles and then start to play an active role - Leave your signature and create posts to frequent issues on your own forum.

The health niche is very competitive - use social media to your advantage -

When I was young, I used adwords to push traffic to an affiliate link, without realizing the consequences. I have been banned since then, and have never attempted to make another account as it is against their TOS.

We have a page on facebook, but I never even thought to join other facebook groups, so i will definately add that to my to do list. I am a part of a few forums, but not as active as I am on yahoo answers. I will switch that around and see if it helps.

Thanks for the advice!

SEO is a good source of free traffic after building a site no matter what others might say. You are probably goofing around.

I must admit, one of the most difficult site to turn around is a community site. You need real engagement from people and consistently too if you must remain relevant in the game.

If you want to do a thing like that you have to be prepared to make it happen like an explosion.

Here are some tips to help you jump start even though I don't claim to be a superstar in promoting community site.

1. Use SEO, start with targeting 2 or 3 good keywords with atleast 6000 global traffic.

2. Use one or two strong ppc companies which adword must be one of them. Visibilty and exposure is paramount for success even if it doesn't translate to sales or activity in a short while. I can recall, I got familiar with many sites and trusted them after seeing their ads everywhere like it went viral. Familiarity leads to trust and then ultimately love.

3. Blog about it and real good. You want to be ahead of the game in your niche? Then offer that info no one else can. CNN says be the first to know.

4. Find a list of top sites in your niche and see if you can promote your site on them.

It's also a smart idea to seek a JV or something of that nature with the best among them and offer them a subsection in your community site. Something like plugin in profit site has on WF.

5. I love your site design. Another thing that you must take into serious consideration is site layout and conversion rate. It's not enough to just love it, it has to satisfy it's purpose. Constantly be on the look out for the best, frequent testing and experimenting is the only way.

Can't think of anything more.

imho your site is trying to be all things to all men. Your subject matter is far too wide - health, fitness, diet, equipment.

There are thousands of blogs/forums/sites for specific health problems - why would anyone who has, say, a thyroid problem join your site when there are dedicated forums and groups full of knowledgeable people in that specific niche.

Pick a health, diet, exercise or equipment niche that you know something about and re-invent your site. If, in the course of time, it grows and diversifies because that's what its members want then fine.

You simply can't seo a site that has such wide aims as yours currently does.

This is going to be a very 'broad' tip here, but, have you ever read Jono Bacon's "The Art of Community" (Google it). It is an extremely massive (several hundred pages) with examples/case studies of everything about, well, "the art of community". He offers the exact same book for paid, as well as, free download. I guarantee you'll be able to walk away with some solid, practical, tips and advice, founded on alot of real life case studies, that could help you. What do you have to loose? If it could help trim down your costs a little, I would say go for it....might be worth the few hours to soak up some of it.

Your site looks great! Rostress hit the nail on the head. It is real broad niche. My suggestion:

Move your focus to a micro niche on your current site and push the micro niche part of the site to Google adwords (set up a new account). Then Social media marketing along with some video marketing.

If you start getting traffic into the micro niche it will trickle to the overall site eventually.