How to get forum members?

[phrone]

Hey guys.. I got a question for yall:

How can I drive more people to sign up at my forums?

I won't post the here, but it's a medical marijuana forum to help inform people and connect qualified legal patients with legal caregivers around Maine! We have helped out many people.. People suffering from terrible things such as AIDS, and Cancer.

I have one idea, and that is to do giveaways.. I have a few companies that were nice enough to send a few T-Shirts so I could do some raffles on the forums. I need a functioning forum I feel first though..

SO how to get members.. I also don't want to pay for advertising either, that is out of the question haha.. Maybe not if it's cheap enough - haha

[biggedon]

one way is to "post" on various blogs and related news articles using, "mainemarijuanatalk.com" as your user name

this will make your domain visible to others and hopefully someone will follow.


but once they get there, you should have something to wet their appetite

Good Luck

[Banned: theinvestor]

This is not an easy task... getting loyal forum members is a very hard thing to do. It takes a lot of time and effort. If you want to make things move quicker your only option is to advertise. Even advertising is not a guarantee that it will succeed.

[phrone]

I appreciate the input folks! Anyone else is welcome to post their opinions also.. The only advertising I have been using lately is just word of mouth. The forum is only about 2 months old, and about 20 people a day go or so right now..

[yru]

Fake it Till You Make it.

Sounds bad, but a lot of people use fake/dummy accounts when starting out a forum to post multiple thread and responses. No one wants to signup and join a forum with no other users.

You mentioned it was related to medical marijuana. You could make a post or two a day about related news under various account names. Find an online news article and quote part of it in the post and then link to the article.

[webcosmo]

Maintain the forum for long enough time, members would add up.

Dont think about the numbers too much, then the process would be less painful

[st3vo]

Fake it Till You Make it.

Sounds bad, but a lot of people use fake/dummy accounts when starting out a forum to post multiple thread and responses. No one wants to signup and join a forum with no other users.

You mentioned it was related to medical marijuana. You could make a post or two a day about related news under various account names. Find an online news article and quote part of it in the post and then link to the article.

This is exactly right. Most forums if not all start off with paid forum posters. You can get cheap forum posters from places like DP. Like the above poster ays no one wants to join a dead forum with no members.

[Corey Bryant]

Make sure to have quality content as well on there. If it is the forum in your signature, it might be pretty difficult to get users unfortunately. Since you have "Maine", it suggests that you are catering to only that state. For legal issues - that I can understand. The laws keep changing in Colorado. I try to keep up on them some but it can be difficult.

There are some other forums related to cancer / HIV / chronic pain that you might consider signing up as a member.

Some people are fearful of signing up on forums of that nature as well - maybe one day the DEA decides it does not have enough to do and subpoenas your records. Or Maine votes to outlaw marijuana. Maybe I am a bit paranoid but being 39 years old and never spending a day in jail does make me think twice before giving my information to a site of that nature.

[RustyK]

Give out free marijuana products would get lots of people signing up guaranteed.

On the T-Shirt idea, you should use QR codes and add it somewhere visible so others can scan it with their mobile phone.

[lilian]

you can buy some posts to start

[Scott]

Add a few "made" members that contribute intriguing talk and be patient.

[radioz]

You also have way too many categories. No one wants to join a conversation of one or two. You should probably reduce your forum to just 4-10 (at most) categories so as to direct people to topics with a conversation going on. That is very standard forum advice, not just mine. Once you have traffic, you can make it look like this forum. I know that there is some good advice at the Simple Machines forum site and likely at phpBB too. This is one of the basics for a new forum even though it doesn't feel good to hear that at first.

[phrone]

Thank you everyone for your tips on how to build it.. I actually let it do what it wanted for a month or two and focused on my other site.. The only down fall I've seen to this was the spam that I just had to clean up for a little while haha..

The forum it'self did okay though - | Total posts 185 | Total topics 73 | Total members 168 | - not bad for not buying advertising, or traffic or anything of that matter..

These are the UNIQUE visits to the forums:
Jan 2011 568
Feb 2011 701
Mar 2011 866
Apr 2011 653

I LOVE the fact that each month is passing by the last month with no problems.. The future will only get busier, and bigger I have a feeling. I say this because I have multiple business partners who want to team up and donate products and do advertising with me as early as May or early June! I am so excited and wanted to share this news as I feel this site will be a success with getting information out the masses and helping educate others on the medicinal uses of cannabis!