Are you willing to invest any more money?

How do you plan on monetizing the site?

- ask your current members to spread the love by referring people, give them a refer link (check the User CP here)
- limit the guest viewing to x threads per day, if they want to see more they must signup
- have an active forum, if few people participate in your forum, people will see it has a dead forum and will not signup
- you can pay people for posting in your forum so it looks more active, heck if you have time you can create several accounts and talk to "yourself"

If you don't have any money right now, you're going to have to approach things differently, obviously.

How do you plan on making money with the site?

If your site will be set up in a way that your members can benefit by bringing in referrals, you can set up an affiliate program so that your current members will have an incentive for bringing in new members. By having a paid-membership area, this can be used to easily monetize the site, while, at the same time, offer an incentive for your affiliate program.

This is just one option. But, it really depends on what your goals are, how you want to structure things and what your overall approach will be. Do you have any sort of plan or ideas?

its a vbulletin addon you have to install

check here http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=231352

its a vbulletin addon you have to install

check here Limited Guest Viewing -- Motivate Guests to Register - vBulletin.org Forum

LOL.. reminds me of when I was 14, I ran rhymekings, shiznit2g, rapbattles, hiphoptechnicz, hiphopheaven, spitboxers, mod at RM.

HHT and NHH were my most successful ones with over 15,000 members each. I sold them, didn't hold onto it long term. Those were the days when the competition was insane. Nowadays there isn't much competition, the niche just got saturated and consolidated. The biggest problem is like you said, monetizing.

Don't even TRY to monetize if you have under a couple thousand members.

Your main problem is you only have 400ish members. It's a baby board. You need to get people from the other forums and get them over. Encourage people to engage in the community.

I ran tournaments, contests, etc. to get the amount of members I had. I was so well known in that niche, that when I launched rhymekings when I was I guess 15-16.. I had 500 members SIGN UP within 24 hours.

rap/hiphop heads that are on forums, are picky about where they join. They're tired of investing time in new forums because they shut down so quickly. The average lifespan of a hiphop forum is 5 months.

Man... back then I didn't know too much, but invested a lot of time into it. I wish I had time to get back into it and build.

The first thing you need to do is develop a plan. This will involve decisions on your part as well as lots of research. Don't go jumping at the idea of setting up an affiliate program if you have no plan. What will you offer your affiliates? If new members aren't required to pay anything, how will you stop your current members (affiliates) from cheating the system and creating accounts themselves?

Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

I have a habit of not assuming too much about what other people already know. I have wasted lots of time while trying to help other people fix their computers over the phone - only to discover that they overlooked something simple that would have been a habitual check for me.

I will admit, though, forums are not my expertise...so, have at it, gentlemen.

deploying proper strategy and keeping the users demand is vital, slight bookish but true

Why am I not suprised nameless that you had all of those forums in your teen years?

To the OP - I know zero about what you are doing, but kudos to you for starting early, if you are reminding nameless of his self at your age, that is a good thing -

years from now you will be addicted to buying stock photography and snatching up hundreds of domains "because you are bored" -

Ry

[DELETED]

[DELETED]

I remember the time when I was a blogger at school... I was writting my blog everywhere one can imagine... can be a table or a wall; you should try facebook ad and target hiphop pages.

I have always seen this business model work. Setup an exclusive paid-membership area that has the most valuable information and tools only available to paid members

forums take time to build.
instead of spending money I would rather focus on free marketing options.

[DELETED]

Hey great job. You just got a new visitors. And you have a page rank of 1 thats looks nice. For earning you can go for adsense. Like warrior forum you can get payed for putting images or some promition from user who are intersted. You can go for exchange links.

[DELETED]

Hi Kevin,

Just wanted to add my 2 cents, if you are serious about making money off your forum, you'll need to treat it as a business. It's good that you've already invested on it initially, now you'll need to market it and grow your user base.

You need a clear objective for the forum, what is it mainly for? If you intend it as a hang out place <- not a very good idea. However, if you intend to use your forum as a platform to connect startup hiphopers and talent scouts, that could lead somewhere. I sometimes listen to hiphop but I'm no hiphop expert :-)

@ kevin1521

So your 16? props to you brother, i wish i had the for site, or even the inclination
to do something when i was your age. If i remember properly, all i was thinking about
was girls, booze and trying not to piss my parents off.

I hope, that whatever it is your trying to do, happens, and happens early enough
for you to be one of those lucky few who actually get to enjoy the majority of their
life.

I don't know ANYTHING about music, but i do know marketing, and sales,
if you ever need a hand, send me a PM. If i can help, i will.

Website seems to be down FYI.

The connection has timed out

[DELETED]