What To Expect From This Guide
This will be a guide revealing the "secrets" of starting up a new forum, because so many people attempt to do so, and so many of them fail. There are no true secrets that nobody knows about, but there are things you should be doing to promote your forum and get some traffic to it. Don't expect any "secret to 1000 members in 5 days!" type of guide, but you can expect tips that will deliver results.
If you ask any experienced webmaster, they'll tell you that one of the hardest things to do successfully is start up a forum.
To Start a Good Forum, You Need a Forum With :
a) A good purpose. People won't want to come to a forum about nothing important, they want to go to a forum that will be beneficial to them in some way, or interesting. So for example, starting a forum about different types of earth worms probably won't generate much traffic, as the earth worm niche probably isn't huge. You can expand on that idea though and perhaps make a forum that deals with fishing, and then include a forum for worms/bait.
b) A niche element (or category). You can certainly feel free to try to tackle a general category, but you have to provide something niched (targeted) that your competition doesn't have if you want to do that. Really broad categories are going to have forums with insane amounts of members (
Digital Point for example with almost 50,000 members), and are going to label themselves as "the" place to go. So you're going to have to offer something more. If you don't want to try to create a gigantic forum, picking a niche can be a lot easier. An example of a more niche forum is the
Info Vilesilencer forums. They are a directory forum that targets just directory owners and deals with just directories, opposed to general webmastering like Digital Point.
c) Incentive to post. This is making the users
want to post in your forum and become an active member. You can do this a various number of ways which I will explain later in the article. Look at the
Profit Geek Forums, they have a contest where you can win great prizes just for posting, as well as tons of content on the main page. I'll discuss these more later on.
It Takes Time
This goes with anything dealing with webmastering or anything that you want to succeed in, and I'm going to say it and say it again : it takes time,
especially with forums. Like I said, forums are one of the hardest things to start up. You're going to have to spend hours and hours promoting it and posting in it, and it's still going to take a long time to get decent members. DO NOT expect to get 100 members your first day, or even month. It may take you 2 months to get only 50 members, but it's so critical that you do not giveup around this time.
Profit Geek has gotten over 100 members within the first month, and if you ask any big forum person, they'll tell you that that it's abnormal to get that many *active* members in under a month. Do you think we got 100+ members from simply making the forum and posting a link to it around other big forums like Digital Point? Heck no. Hours and hours (6+) were spent on Profit Geek every single day. We have fresh new content all the time, and a great contest in the forums that keeps people coming back. Does this mean you have to spend 6+ hours a day to make a great forum? Nope, but you will have to spend a lot and it will take longer. So don't be discouraged if it's month 1 and you only have 25 members, there's nothing wrong with that. As long as those members are active and posting, 25 is very good!
How to Drive Traffic to Your Forums (the Cheap Way)
Here is the meat and potatoes to the article, I'm going to actually discuss what will drive traffic to your forum. I'll be going over the ways that are cheap, as you can pay to get members to your site, but I'm sure you don't want to be spending a monthly budget of $1000+. The Profit Geek forums were started up and promoted with very little money. So here we go.
1)Fresh Quality Content
If you want users to join your forums and actually have an interest in them, you have to give them some content, and you have to keep it coming, and keep it fresh. One of the better ways of having content is by having a main page or blog for your site.
Profit Geek (Main Page) has both. Profit Geek is a webmastering site, so we need to give our users a lot of quality content to help them with webmastering. We have our blog which in the beginning we made a new article every day to build up a nice base of articles for users to read. We also have a weekly podcast show, and webmaster tools to help them. So users will be attracted to Profit Geek because they see that we are giving out fresh tips and news every day, and this will make them want to come back frequently.
A main page isn't needed for a forum though, but make sure that you're posting quality articles in most of the sections and make and effort to help people out as much as you can.
2) Attraction Marketing
One of our podcast episodes deals with attraction marketing. I'll describe it here, but to get a more detailed explaination, simply
click here to listen to the 5 minute podcast. Attraction marketing is basically labeling yourself to other people. You obviously want to label yourself as a good and helpful person. So how do you do this? Well Johnny, you go out there and be a good helpful person! Go to other similar forums and make a name (the same name so you're known about on all forums), and just start helping people out. Soon you'll develop and image for yourself, and people will know to come to you for help. Reply to their post and give a thoughtful and helpful post, and then at the end say "PM me if you want some more help!" When they PM you, give them more help, and then give them a link to your forums and say something like "I can help you out with whatever you need, just join my forums because I browse there more frequently." It's as simple as that. But you have to make sure to give out thoughtful responses; giving a 1 sentence response and then say "hey join my forums" won't do anything for you.
3) Be Active in Your Own Forum
People like to see when the admin is active in their own forum, especially in the beginning. Once you become pretty big, the members do most of the work themselves. But in the beginning, you have to be on there every day posting and helping out everybody thats posting, starting new topics, etc. If you're never on and there's only 5 members, they're going to get sick of talking to eachother every day and wondering if the advice they're giving eachother is right. They like to see the expert come in and help them with whatever they need.
4) Post in Other Forums About Your Forum
Now the key thing here is to not spam your forum everywhere in the world. I'm telling you to trust me when I say this. I've learned from personal experience that spamming isn't the right way to do things, you're just risking your reputation and it usually won't even result in much. So don't go to every forum and start a thread about your forum in all 50 sections. Just pick the most appropriate forum, and say "Hey I just started [this] new forum, I'd appreciate it if you took a look at it and gave some feedback." That's not spam, it's just asking for feedback on your forum. Most webmaster forums have a "Website Review" section, so that's the best place to do it.
Also, don't limit linking back to your forums in just threads. If someone asks for advice, give a thoughtful (not crap) response, and in the end say "you can find more information about this at my thread over [here]." That will drive the user to your forum, and if he likes the information he sees, he'll join.
5) Your Signature Links at Other Forums
Your signature is a very valuable thing. If you notice at forums like Digital Point, many people actually rent their signatures out to other places, which can then add their link and some text to that user's signature. Something also important in your signature is your anchor text. This should contain good key words, but also be attractive for the user to click. I'll give out a bad/average example, and then a good example of a signature link for the Profit Geek Forums.
Bad Example
Web forum
That's telling us nothing, only the fact that it's a link to a webmaster forum. There's a million other ones out there, so why waste the time clicking?
Bad Example #2
Profit Geek
This example is a little better because it includes the brand, but it still doesn't really make our user want to click it. What is Profit Geek? They don't know, and we're not telling them...so why click?
Good Example
Profit Geek Webmastering Forum -
Free contest, win prizes just for posting!
Here, we're giving out a brand name, telling what the name is, and giving the viewer instant incentive to click that link.
Good Example #2
Free Prize Giveaway for Webmasters -
Profit Geek Webmastering Forum, Make more Money!
This includes instant incentive, the brand, and part of our slogan. Another solid signature link.
continued in next post
. And that's exactly the effect you have to go for when you run a contest. We also have a contest for most referrals. So the most back links we get to Profit Geek from the winning site, that site owner will get $250 in cash. So we're making a contest which is fun, and getting benefit from it as well.
and also you sohuld check a member of the forum who has also mentioned a link to a site( i think its in the signature) to help you create a forum that will grow and become a large community (like this one 
