I just launched my first forum

Jordy3738 · #1 (**permalink**) 03-30-2008, 09:50 AM

How can I start generating traffic to this forum that I launched.

I published my first forum before I joined Website Babble a few days ago. I have since discovered, through related threads here, that it is a good idea to have traffic established first before adding a forum to a site

The forum I created is for women in my city. I am in the process of getting some of my women friends to start posting and also trying to recruit a lady to be the forum moderator.

Any advice would be very much appreciated

Just wanted to say, I am really enjoying interacting with all of you, the welcome comments to this community have been very heart warming.

CSSadmin · #2 (**permalink**) 03-30-2008, 09:59 AM

Offline promotion for online projects works well. If it is localized, for women in your city, place up some flyers that will attract them. If it is religious based, maybe ask your pastor if you can include it in the weekly bulletin, or post it up at coffee houses, and the like. Wherever you can find a bulletin board, post it. If you live in a relatively small town, go to your main street and take flyers with you to the merchants there, and ask if you can leave them on the counter. The women shop owners may be interested, or their wives, daughters, or female employees as well as their customers. It's some work, but if you have monetized your site, then it should help cover the trouble to build up the membership. Good luck with it!

Jordy3738 · #3 (**permalink**) 03-30-2008, 10:08 AM

I am very new at some of the webmaster terminology, what do you mean by, "monetized your site."

CSSadmin · #4 (**permalink**) 03-30-2008, 10:13 AM

i'm sorry. i just mean if you have created a way to earn some revenue from your forum, such as adsense. perhaps this is purely your interest, and not in any way a form of revenue generation? there are a number of ways to earn money from forums. If you notice on this one, there are banners that run along the sides offering hosting, ebay, etc. whenever someone clicks on those banners and signs up for services, the owner of this forum has just generated some revenue, that is a way of monetizing or your site. monetizing just means making the site, forum, blog, etc earn you money.

Jordy3738 · #5 (**permalink**) 03-30-2008, 11:17 AM

Yes, I am in the process of monetizing the site as I am learning how to do this. I have not studied any materials on how to have a successful forum yet. I just heard Joel Comm mention in one of his videos that they are a great way to generate content, which in turn converts into revenue. I just started running with the idea without much research.

I have some ideas such as , I would like to sell some advertising space to local vendors etc. One of my biggest problems with this website stuff is that I am doing to many things. I guess that this one is going to really require some extra off line promotion, thanks for the insight.

lisa · #6 (**permalink**) 03-30-2008, 11:28 AM

It's funny you posted this 'cause I was going to blog about starting a forum in the next week or so. There's a lot of questions about that here so I think that would be a useful post to many people.

I don't know how much traffic you have to your site, but one thing I did was encourage people to visit by putting links to the forum within my content on my site. For example, if I'm explaining HTML I'll add "Post a question about HTML" in my forum to get people over here.

augenauf · #7 (**permalink**) 03-30-2008, 01:09 PM

Well you have a VERY plesant mien, I'm noticing--that's essential!

Do you live in a large city?

Ulrich · #8 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 05:33 AM

lisa,

Please notify us on the forums here when you have posted about forum creation. I am working extremely hard to gain between 5-15 backlinks daily of sites that are relative to mine (mostly blogs).

So once the traffic starts paying off I want to create a forum but I expect to do so from within 3-6 months only. Not being too overhasty about it but I want to do things right.

lisa · #9 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 09:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ulrich

lisa,

Please notify us on the forums here when you have posted about forum creation. I am working extremely hard to gain between 5-15 backlinks daily of sites that are relative to mine (mostly blogs).

So once the traffic starts paying off I want to create a forum but I expect to do so from within 3-6 months only. Not being too overhasty about it but I want to do things right.

Just subscribe to my blog's RSS feed and you won't miss it. Also I put my most recent blog posts in my sig.

Jordy3738 · #10 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CSSadmin

Offline promotion for online projects works well. !

Thanks for sharing the great idea! The city I live in is Sarasota. Forums which are focused on our area appear to be doing pretty well. There are many womens shops in this central Florida location. I am hitting the streets today with a few business cards I designed last night. I was trying to think of a creative way to offer an incentive for women to participate. It would be neat to have a weekly, Sarasota Forums, giveaway. Maybe that would keep people coming back regularly. This all sounds like I am going to have to get away from the computer screen to make this thing move quickly.

I have a friend who owns a local advertising company. He handles promotions for several restaurants in our area. I shared a few of my ideas with him yesterday. By all appearances it looks as though we eventually will be working together. He is developing a networking plan, through website development for his clients, that the womens forum may fit very well with.

I really appreciate the wisdom that you have shared with me.

Vision Becoming Reality
Sarasota Women's Forum

CSSadmin · #11 (**permalink**) 04-01-2008, 09:58 AM

You might be surprised how receptive the merchants are to this idea and may even be willing to give you the promos for your site if you promo them in return, such as the Give Away this Month is Donated by "Such and Such Shop" and that gives them a chance as well to get some visibility.

Sounds like a great link you've got with your friend. I hope the two of you are extremely prosperous

HalB · #12 (**permalink**) 04-04-2008, 10:20 AM

For anyone interested in having a forum on your website, I suggest checking out PhPbb. I am somewhat new to creating webpages, and was asked to have a forum on my website. It didn't cost much and was easy to setup. For an example of what this forum looks like, goto www.capitalridercrew.com.

When looking at my site, don't be to hard on me. This is only the third one I have written, and it is still under construction. Also keep in mind group members have only been able to access the site for for a few days.

Lajocar · #13 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 12:18 AM

HalB, I checked out your forum and saw that you only have one category.

You must also be aware of the spam factor. I had a couple of PhPBB forums and the spam was a big problem.

Jordy3738 · #14 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 06:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lajocar

HalB, I checked out your forum and saw that you only have one category.

You must also be aware of the spam factor. I had a couple of PhPBB forums and the spam was a big problem.

Thanks for sharing with me about the spam. I will be keeping an eye out for the spammers. Did your forums ever begin to generate “decent” traffic relating the word to quantity and quality? How did you get the traffic started in the forums? I wonder if you landed in a different forum address, there are ten categories

Jordy
Sarasota Womens Forum
Teen Devotionals

lisa · #15 (**permalink**) 04-05-2008, 08:37 AM

No kidding about the spam. Having people verify their email address helps a lot (a vbulletin feature) but dealing with spam is inevitable with a forum. I did install a script that sort of combats the spambots but as I'm sure you've all seen, spam is always going to find its way in. I just delete and keep moving.

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