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I am talking here about sites that consists only of a forum.
how did you get to be so popular, I mean here everybody is talking about getting friends to make the first posts, but in some you got to get popular,
what have you done? hopefully not spamming other websites.
A lot of hard work, and countless hours of interacting with people to make them feel welcome. There really wasn't a secret for me, other than make people feel welcome, keep the content clean and enjoyable, and easy to use. Word of mouth carried most of the advertising to bring new people.
Also, when you visit other places or send emails within groups you belong to -- don't forget your signature links. It can't hurt to provide the information even in these arenas.
Well I mean first how to get the people to the website.
Is it by posting with relevant information in other websites?
Yes, and by starting threads yourself. So you can make people think that the boards are very active. Therefore, more people will come over because they see a forum that is active. Which might be a reason how the big boards got 'big'.Originally Posted by ozni
Usually the way that I start a forum is by getting a few friends together and just start bantering back and fourth. If you frequent some other forums you may wish to create a very small link in your signature. Nothing over imposing and something that will not anger the admins of the other forums. Sometimes this can be overdone so whatch how you do it. I do know some people that create multiple user's on a forum and pretend that they are actual user's. Very time consuming and very boring, but I hear it does work.
Getting started is very hard. To get my forum off the ground, I make regular posts myself starting new threads. Also, I offer incentives. For instance, everyone who make at least five "non-spam" posts between Feb 13, 2005 and March 30, 2005 I am entering in a drawing for a $25 gift card. Sure some people will only make enough posts to qualify to be entered into the drawing, however, they are posts.
I offer similar incentives for people to recruit others to participate in my forum. Sure I have to pay for this out of pocket as there isn't enough traffic to generate ad-revenue, however, it is still a cheap way of getting people to post in the beginning. Lets face it, it isn't much fun posting in a forum that doesn't have many participants. As such it is necessary to offer incentives to get people to participate. Drawings are a good way to offer incentives while keeping costs under control.
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So in your opinion how long does the process take? from starting to get friends to post until I really get some good trafic.
Depends on what you consider good traffic, or a "big" site. Do you want more than 5,000 members and people posting about 1,000 posts a day? If so, it might take well over a year or two. But a site can be quite active and get lots of traffic with only a couple hundred members who regularly post, which could take just a few months. I've had some forums take well over a year to get going, while others begin to take off within a few months.
For the moment I don't have big forums but 2 years ago I had sports forums it had something like 6000 members and 175000 posts within the year and a half it stayed online, after it went off for many reasonsthis not a too big forum but compared with the period it stayed I consider it decent
it started as a board where me and 6 other friends discussed about sports: different local and international sports: soccer, handball, basketball, volleyball, Tennis, Formula1, athletics, swimming... within two months we had like 500 members and 4000 messages ! just keep your forums active with new posts and talk about them to people who might be interested
good luck
Lots of time & hard work. You cant just create the site and sit back and watch it grow. You need to be pro-active.
What you mean by pro-active?
And hard work? I might be working hard, but with no results, what is the hard work that brought results in forum development?
Ask friends to join your forum and stay active, that gives a good start.
Make sure it also looks active (no empty subforums), make sure you're forum gets in the SE index, ask your friends to ask their friends, put a link in your signature on other forums or emails, add it to website directories,...
Can't say that my forum is big (only 42 members), but it's a very nice community and pretty active. And that's how I got my members
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Pro-active means going out there day in and day out, trying to exchange links and otherwise spread the word about your site.
There's plenty of threads in this forum that deal with how to expand forum development but it includes running contests, making sure your site is always full of new and useful content, keeping users happy, maintaining the preception your forums are active....things of that nature.
The bottom line is there is no sure-fire way to make your forums a success. If there were, we'd just post a sticky topic here and close this forum
At our community we offer people 200+ web templates once their post count is 25+. Although we dont have a lot of active users the community is full of info that members have posted just to get access to the templates. Its slowly getting more and more active members. It just takes a lot of time and hard work.
It depends on the kind of forum, one that I'm a partner in has grown to over 500 members. This is aimed at gay clubbing in cardiff (UK), I think the biggest key to our success was getting involved with actual clubs and bars, most of them now actually use as as thier 'official forums' and link to us from thier websites, and also have 'officials' from thier venue who come on and posts details of all thier events.
True, one of our sites is sub 200 members (we clean the member base on a regular basis), and the posting rate is starting to go through the roof. At another site we have just under 4k members and the posting rate is glacial even though we have 40 or so members on during busy periods, have started creating threads myself just to keep things rolling along.
Started a tech forum and hit 3,000 members with three months by posting answers at other tech forums with my forum in my sig. Tech forums are easy to promote as you are offering something people need.
I don't think there are many big forums out there that haven't developed through either a) a lot of hard work, and/or b) a little advertising investment. (but most likely a))
Aaron
And time. Most of the "big sites" out there have been around for a few years. It's no coincidence.
Indeed, time can be your best friend.
You have to post messages a lot and start new threads all day, don't let a day pass by without writing something there. Try to keep a nice atmosphere, treat your members nice and still be ready to enforce rules, promote and work very hard.
I find word of mouth is the best way to get people to join your forum and make it big..I have signed up at and posted for a long time at countless forums just because someone gave me a URL over AIM.
Dan
Not that I have a large forum but like most said lots of hard work / hacking the software. But also finding the right MODs.
Not to mention getting listed in the SEs for everything imaginable. More traffic the more signups. end of story.
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Probably how the time is spent. This forum has now 10k+ posts, and the forum posted 10k+ posts within a year; before that, there were only 1000 or. This forum has over 60k posts and it's just a year old.
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