How to get people to join your website forum?

by darrenlc

Posted: 12 years ago 13 replies

This might be a bit of a weird one and maybe some of you might think this it is a bit cheeky but I just wanted to try it anyway. Most of my websites got hit by the Google updates so I decided to start again. I decided to concentrate on one website instead of starting one project and moving on to another half way through. What I did was to re-launch an EMD site as a brand and try to do everything by the book. So far it seems to be working. You can find the thread about it here:

http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...-gonna-do.html

I have been really busy over the last few months putting all my eggs into one basket with a certain website so if it fails I'm done. There is still a lot of work to be done on this site but it is slowly getting there. Anyway I have just added a forum to the site but am too busy to fill it up so I had an idea.

Now everyone that has a website want to get links back to their site so here is what I propose. If you would like to tell us about the great products you promote on the new forum and leave a link back to your site. You can do this by either using a signature or putting the link within the thread.

The website is a page rank 4 and although you won't be getting a PR4 link back to you site (as your threads will be new pages) you will still be getting a link back. If you don't have a website but promote product online with affiliate links the you can do that too but please do not past affiliate links directly into the page. If you could use a URL shortener instead that would be fine.

As the forum is still new there may not be a section relevant to your product and if that is the case just let me know and I will add it for you. I would be grateful if you didn't spam the forum to death like I see on some forums where there are about 30 links to a site and nothing written about the product.

Anyway, I know this probably won't get much of a response but all the same I would like to try it and see if it works. What I plan to do is promote the forum from the homepage and try to drive traffic to if as well as trying to drive traffic from other forums. Any new threads that get created will be displayed on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus through the RSS feed. Now you can tell me how mad or cheeky I am!

#forum #join #people #website

JulianKane 12 years ago

I believe it is customary to provide a link to said "Forum" whilst asking people to join.
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- darrenlc 12 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by JulianKane
  
  I believe it is customary to provide a link to said "Forum" whilst asking people to join.
  
  Sorry Julian it's YibYab - Share The Best Deals On The Internet
  
  Thanks
  
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MikeFriedman 12 years ago

Be careful what you wish for...
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- darrenlc 12 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by MikeFriedman
  
  Be careful what you wish for...
  
  You could be right there. No takers yet though apart from the bots
  
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yukon

Banned 12 years ago

I have no doubts that you will get hammered with spam & it will snowball as more folks find out they can drop affiliate links.

IMO it's a bad idea to allow unknown people to drop links (let alone affiliate links).

Thanks
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MikeFriedman

12 years ago

Originally Posted by yukon

Yep.

You could find yourself with a full-time job just cleaning up the garbage that comes in. I've been there before.

I was all proud because I had a forum getting lots of traffic. Then more traffic. Thousands of users. Then I started waking up every morning to porn, viagra, and all kinds of other links on the first 3-4 pages of every sub-forum.

And I never even advertised it in a place with as many spammers as here.

Thanks

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darrenlc

12 years ago

I think you're both right there. I just wanted to try and get the forum started. I think a lot of the porn stuff and spam you had probably came from automated tools like xrumer. I do have askimit and stop forum spam plugins to help cut it down. I've also set it up so that the first post of every new member has to be moderated before it can be shown. It was just another of many ideas that hasn't worked. Will keep trying and thinking.

Thanks
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MikeFriedman

12 years ago

Originally Posted by darrenlc

Oh yeah, it was definitely Xrumer.

Spam protection will help. Tools are getting better and better at getting around that stuff though.

If you have some help to moderate things as the forum gets bigger, you will be fine.

My particular forum wasn't making enough money for me to invest in antispam programs or the time involved it keeping it clean.

Thanks

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gotlinks 12 years ago

To be perfectly frank I used to run a RATHER LARGE webmaster forum and sold it about 8 months ago for $2,500.

It was worth more then that but I needed to buy a motorcycle so I stupidly sold it. Anyways, needless to say I believe I have some insight on this subject esp since mine was a webmaster forum.

Anyone remember Bzimage.org? That was mine (not a forum anymore).

Anyways.

To grow a webmaster forum you need a few things (mimick what the best do).

Lets take Warrior for instance.

1. Its active.
2. It has daily Posters.
3. New threads that create conversations.

Now these are done naturally here on Warrior because its so big but you need to mimick this in order to get the ball rolling.

I used to honestly just ask key people / moderators to come check out my forum and if they did not feel at home just leave and let me know and I would close their account.

I will say that I had a PR6 at the time so getting in early on my forum and being a TOP member meant a profile of PR5 that was some good links for people (if you don't have something similar focus on what people do care about, activity).

Pay people, bribe people, beg people, do whatever it takes to get people talking. Then your good to go. My 2 cents.
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petemcal 12 years ago

What I would do it basically just treat it as a discussion board amongst yourself and your friends/colleagues at first.

Reach out to all your IM contacts and tell them you've started a forum (and say you don't initally expect it to be anything) but you want to treat it like a mastermind group. This way you're naturally getting people together (all be it a small number) who are interested in the same topic and WILL chat.

If you can get your contacts/colleagues interested at this level try and get some buzz for them to do the same thing you did and invite all of their contacts to the "mastermind group". Make them mods and hopefully watch the forum grow from those seeds.
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Michael Ten 12 years ago

Grow a community worth joining.
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crete 12 years ago

There is no such thing as if you build it they will come. You personally need to make new threads daily and answer any posts that have been made. You will have 2000 posts before you begin to get some steady action. That's the biggest advice I can offer, clearly you havent been doing this since your forum has a total of 15 posts. You have to make 30 -40 new posts daily to get the search engines going....
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- DeadPixel 12 years ago
  
  Yeah you would need to ask all your friends to join and participate and create a couple of fake accounts yourself to get the conversation going. Discuss topical subjects and don't be afraid to get contraversial to provoke conversation
  
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How to get people to join your website forum?

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