Where do you get most of your members?

[fullphaser]

So I have been going around submitting to search engines, posting on forums etc. and it would seem to me that none of it is working so I was curious where does most people get their initial userbase from, and then past that their extended userbase?

[iTechno]

Search engines, but my websites url is keyword rich in a small niche (Saintsrowforums.com) so it was easy.

[rimian]

purchasing keyword rich urls makes things a lot easier.

instead of having one medium sized site to describe my service, portfolio and products i broke this in into 3 websites under specific domians. it works i think.

[fullphaser]

purchasing keyword rich urls makes things a lot easier.

instead of having one medium sized site to describe my service, portfolio and products i broke this in into 3 websites under specific domians. it works i think.

that seems pretty reasonable I would assume that that domain is the first step, are there any other key methods?

[Nikolas]

I get most of my members from search engines and other related forums

[GeorgeB.]

Yes keyword rich domains DO help quite a bit.

That's why pretty much any good keyword+forums.com is taken these days

[Nikolas]

Yes keyword rich domains DO help quite a bit.

That's why pretty much any good keyword+forums.com is taken these days

I wont agree with that. Brandable domains are better for forums in the long term.

Take a look at sp. No keywords, but everybody knows that forum

[GeorgeB.]

You don't agree that keyword domains help?

Because that's all I said....

I didn't say they were the best. I just said they help new forums in terms of SEO.

[fullphaser]

are there any particular sites you go on (related to yours) if so about how many related sites are you on advertising your link? and if not now, was there a point when you were on other forums?

[Bleys]

About half my traffic on one of my forums comes from Google. Google has been very kind to it, and yeah, the domain is mainkeyword+forum.com -- so you guys are on to something there. Most of our new members probably come from searches.

Initially, though, members were coming from two places: 1. we sponsored a contest on another site in the community (a programming contest for the framework that the site deals with) and 2. from signature links on other forums the founders post on (like this one). And in fact, those two things both still send a good deal of traffic.

I also emailed a lot of blogs in the community and asked politely if they'd link to us--some of them did.

[icesar]

SP has a first mover advantage though, any forum starting today would have a very (very very) difficult time taking over this niche. So my take would be to make your forum have a laser focus on a smaller niche, and one way to do that is with your domain name.

That's obviuosly not the only way though. You can go with a brandable name, and then just make sure that your title and tagline explain very well who your forum is targetted at.

[Diether]

I get most of my members from other forums.

[fullphaser]

About half my traffic on one of my forums comes from Google. Google has been very kind to it, and yeah, the domain is mainkeyword+forum.com -- so you guys are on to something there. Most of our new members probably come from searches.

Initially, though, members were coming from two places: 1. we sponsored a contest on another site in the community (a programming contest for the framework that the site deals with) and 2. from signature links on other forums the founders post on (like this one). And in fact, those two things both still send a good deal of traffic.

I also emailed a lot of blogs in the community and asked politely if they'd link to us--some of them did.

That is one thing I have been wondering about is the appropriatness of asking others that you know semi well if they would be intersted in joining a forum etc. I always feared the method was on that list with distasteful advertising etc.

[Bleys]

If you know them semi-well, I don't see why it would be distasteful. Asking people you don't know at all to join your forum seems like an unsolicited advertisement, but if you know them "semi well" and you think they genuinely would be interested, then why not?

What I was doing by emailing blogs was not asking people to join though, I was saying something like, "Your readers might be interested in this new forum that deals with the subject of your blog. I invite you to check it out and if you feel it is worthy of a link, I'd be very appreciative." (That's the distilled version... more or less what I'd say, but with a little more detail and it helps if you don't sound like a form letter (i.e., customize the letter to the recipient by mentioning things they've written about on their blog that you enjoyed).

[originalthechad]

I get most of my traffic from **** and other larger forums with 20'000 or more members

[lodist]

i think the ultimate goal is to have your members coming from a lot of sites spread evenly. personally I dont want to rely on ONE forum or ONE search engine. I have seen over time the segment of "other" is slowly growing.

[soccerfriend]

most of my members came from here from SP

[AvengeX]

My members are friends and off other communities which have failed. I also get a few from tutorial indexing sites like http://www.pixel2life.com.

[-Webmaster-]

I get mine from Misc ways. But mostly from other forums. I get less hits from Google.