Promoting a Non-Profit Community

[tenchiws]

I am in a bit of a pickle. I have a community...or I should say I have a website FOR a community. I have a few members, I have a few posts, and I have vBulletin.

My question is, how can I promote my community to get a lot of members, a lot of posts, a lot of regular posters, and maybe a little cash on the side with no cost to me other then what I pay for vBulletin? So far, all of my communities have just dropped off the face of the earth because no one ever visited them except like 3 regulars. All the rest (let's say 7) forgot the URL or just never came back.

I've been thinking of getting HiveMail as a way to get recurring members but I'm not quite sure. If anyone has any suggestions on how to promote my community, please let me know! For reference, my site is http://forums.melchior.us. Thanks...

[filburt1]

The only way to get frequent users is to have unique, useful content in a focused subject area. Addons and hacks rarely help in this respect.

Although consider this: if your site is non-profit, why advertise at all? Sure, it will build the community, but it will end up costing you money and your users frustration once you yourself have to start running ads on your site to pay for the initial advertising.

I sugguest that you concentrate on content and an excellent Google ranking instead.

[tenchiws]

Thanks, I know how to get some good google rankings: just get links to your site, right? But how can I get good content for a site that is nothing but community? I guess my site is somewhat of a penpal system but I'm not really sure what it could be classified as. Any other suggestions?

Thanks filburt for the suggestions!

[filburt1]

The important things for Google rankings are high text content (but relevant content), and a very good domain name. I don't know what your domain name means at a glance (it's also not one of the three main TLDs). Mine, however, is obvious immediately.

Search Google for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for tips.