How do i get people to join
 

how do i go about more people to join my forum and post and stay for good would advertising be advisable i have added my site to google etc but still dont seem to be getting many hits. the are loads of successful boards out there i.e ebs:live which inspired me to start up my own site and forum (thanx sab) i just want to know how i can become as successful as ebs:live etc.
my site is www.maxitalk.co.uk all the hits are from my friends they post but i had to teach them how a forum works etc. and they find it hard to use. i am adding some hacks at the end of january so it will be more appealable also may add photopost too and im gonna get a really neat style from extrempixels. Any ideas would be handy thanks in advance.

remove the splash, get some gimmick (hacks), re-choose your colours oh and try theadminzone.com get onto a launch team that will help as all the forums you join to ehlp them build up means that with every post you participate in your advertise via your sig, the more sig links back to your site the more people see your site

btw ebs aint successful, yet ;)

sab its brilliant and i think u have done an excellent job thanks for your help

/me bows b4 sab :P

oo not a bad idea i need some people i get about 5 people aday :( how add me site to google?

My new site talks about getting members, getting good rankings in google and so on --
Come take a look - its all about vB

If you're interested in my two cents for getting a lot of members/activity, I always consider these two options to be the best:

>> Specific Target + Rival Forums: For one, (at least in my opinion), there are way too many forums that get started up for generic purposes. *picks one* gaming forums. with 1 forum for every game they think will be cool. end result: almost always failure. By targeting something more specific than general chit-chat, gaming, etc, and focusing on a specific thing (like a certain game (or whatever)) will produce much larger activity than a new start-up that tries to incorporate everything, including all the cool hacks that vB~.org has. (not that I don't think they're cool -- I just don't think adding all of them to your forum will help much in the long run). Also, by getting more specific, you have less competing forums to deal with, making your site an easier choice for a user to arrive at. Trying to do compete with huge gaming sites usually doesn't work well, but if you can provide quality, the users will see that you are better than the other similar boards/sites.

>> Originality. The only specific example I can come up with right now is www.gaiaonline.com -- check their stats. They obviously did something right. They have something that not every board has or can download and install on their board. HUGE plus for drawing people in.

Any thought?

just check out the above site

Gaia has 266590530 articles posted, with 191468563 in storage
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man wish my site was like that :P

I don't. So much time, money, and work would go into that thing EVERY day.

Three simple things:

1. Content
2. Content
3. Did I mention, Content?

Regards,

Matt

i do i'd love it

rite i have removed splash screen and i have signed upto theadminzone, brought a template from extremepixels have a look www.maxitalk.co.uk/forum/ im going to get some mods installed at end of month and may get photopost installed any more ideas welcome thanx.