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New site suggestions

by researchpro
11 replies
Hi,
I'm opening a new site with daily content updated daily and it has a forum as well.
Any ideas how I can get the forum kicked off so it doesn't look like a vacant forum? I heard it's not a good idea to start a forum until you have plenty of people to use it, so I guess I'm breaking that rule. Is there any way to connect my forum to an existing forum, that way both sites could share traffic?

Another big question I have is the what is the simplest and cheapest way to have member paid access to parts of the site? Which merchant has instant access to my pages once the user has paid? I'm not a html or php coder so I need something real , real, easy. I opened a bus. account at the bank already.
Thanks
#forum #site #suggestions
  • Profile picture of the author Trevor
    Hey there,

    You can hit up a related forum's owner by email and explain to him you are starting a new forum and it has great potential for the future. Try to persuade him to include a banner or any ad on his forum linking to the forum of yours and in exchange for this service, link from your forum to his/her. Although this is reciprocal linking, it won't hurt your rankings and it is a quite effective way to cross-split traffic.

    You can also contact an email list owner in your niche and buy solo ads or do an ad swap.
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  • Profile picture of the author simpleleveraging
    If your Forum is quality and the site is too then don't be afraid of launching it. Yes the amount of traffic might be minimal at first but slowly you can drive traffic there by a number of tactics.

    Whenever you post to the blog always link to a post in the forum where you supply more details. Leave a summary in the public area of the forum and more detail in the private members area if you want folks to join.
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  • Profile picture of the author WhiteDove
    Begin the forum as a sign up page, a squeeze page!
    Give away some valuable stuff related to your niche in exchange for name and email address.
    On the thank you page, give them what you promised, than add a viral element. Tell-a-friend script or something like it, don’t mention anything about the forum, not yet.
    Continue sending traffic to this squeeze page until you have around 400-500 or more members. Then send an email to everyone announcing the forum and a contest…
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    • Profile picture of the author focused
      Originally Posted by WhiteDove View Post

      Begin the forum as a sign up page, a squeeze page!
      Give away some valuable stuff related to your niche in exchange for name and email address.
      On the thank you page, give them what you promised, than add a viral element. Tell-a-friend script or something like it, don't mention anything about the forum, not yet.
      Continue sending traffic to this squeeze page until you have around 400-500 or more members. Then send an email to everyone announcing the forum and a contest...
      Some excellent suggestions, WhiteDove.
      I like the strategy of building up a list of names first, before
      actually officially launching at that time.
      Besides promoting a contest at that point, you might
      also anyone who visits and participates in the forum a
      free gift of some kind, or a good discount at the forum store.
      Offer them some value and good content, and you should
      be able to build up a good membership base.
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  • Profile picture of the author researchpro
    Thank you all so much. These are really, really great ideas. I'll use them, just have to figure out the specifics. I'm overwhelmed with setting everything up for my first site. My site will have streaming live content, affiliate store, news letter, forum and a static content page updated weekly. my merchant/membership is the hardest part to figure out who or what to use for it. So far amember and membersgear have my interest. Not really wanting to fork out 200 bucks to amember on my first site right off the bat, without knowing if my site will payoff or not. Paypal wants 20 permonth to run recurring payments and I don't want to pay that to them. Any suggestions for merchant/membership capabilities for a newby like me?
    thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author riaanvdl
    You can pay users to interact with your forum as well. I think you can do that through freelancer.com
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  • Profile picture of the author nicolas simpson
    Getting a forum up and running is going to be tough and i can bet that its going to be tougher in getting someone linked to your forum knowing that its new and dont have much activity going on. I could suggest you buy post but this get a bit expensive.

    Best Regards.
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    Starting a forum is like a catch 22. You drive people to it, but it looks dead and inactive, so people go away. You should build up a large email list, and prepare them for the launch of your new forum. When it does launch, let your list know about them. Also, come up with marketing campaigns designed to drive people straight to your blog. Some people will suggest making fake posts... but you shouldn't do this. It's an exercise in futility.
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    ==>> Free book reveals make money with affiliate marketing
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  • Profile picture of the author megawarrior
    You can pre-populate your forum using an auto-content script (e.g. Instadigi) that pulls Q&A's from places like Yahoo Answers into your forum. But you may run into duplicate content issues. This may be ok if you are NOT relying on organic search engine visitors initially (i.e. you are driving visitors to the forum through some other source) and once your community is setup with real users, you could remove the earlier automated posts to get rid of the duplicate content before SEO'ing your site.

    Or, to avoid to duplicate content issue completely, you could just go to the Yahoo Answers section of your niche, read the posts and answers, and re-write them into your forum. However, this would talk more time as it is manual.
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  • Profile picture of the author Nigel Booker
    You don't mention what forum software you're using. Some have membership payment options/restrictions available built in, others have such options available as addons. Google should help you find what's available for your software.

    When I started a forum it was slow to start with but have only a few subforums & make sure you are at least active there... If the forum covers a small niche you need to contact people in that niche and point them towards your forum. That may mean going to other forums in your niche to get your name/forum known. What the moderators of those other forums will allow may differ - I was always getting other forums 'advertising' themselves & I never used to let it worry me. With more than 10,000 members & 200,000 page views/month for my forum I don't think it ever did me any harm

    Once you have some regular visitors expand the forum with additional subforums - if you've got a good niche, maintain order on the forum (I could write an ebook about that ebook ) & keep motivated it will succeed.
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  • Profile picture of the author researchpro
    The forum issue does seem to be fixable now, but the more imediate problem is setting up a system where I can accept payments , recurring subscriptions. PayPal wants 20 per month to do this with credit cards. Is paypal the way to go with this or is there a better way with less overhead. I don't like the idea of overhead payments right off the bat.
    thanks
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    Double the impact of your email offers - Easy and Free to Do.
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