Okay, I'm swallowing my pride...

...how do you folks with big boards do it? I'm proud of the two sites I created in my sig?both having won BOTM both here and at vbulletin.com despite having no active community to speak of. SpaceBuffs.com especially has some very nice backlinks pointing at it, hence the high PR. It has links in both the Yahoo and ODP directories, as well as some nice science sites and major university sites. I have a link to the site in my sig on various forums which have a topic similar to SpaceBuffs.

Still...nada. I can't convert visitors. I'm not sure what it is I'm doing wrong. The frustration has caused me to completely give up promoting the sites and adding any content, and I pretty much keep both up and running just so I can have them in my design portfolio.

I love working on forums, both my own and for clients. I'd love to one day have a successful forum of my own, instead of abandoned eye-candy. Any tips on how to drive traffic to the forums and convert said traffic would be GREATLY appreciated.

[Ati2]

Originally Posted by masons

Spot a UFO and post it on your site, then call all the newspapers and let them know.

LOL, this is the funniest advice I have read. Might be good though. Still funy.

Anyway, since the site is soooo nice, I went ahead and registered, made a few posts. We'll see what happens.

[m_k]

great skins!

definitely some of the best I have seen :-)

[RedTyger]

There is absolutely no justice in the world, that's a crazily nice forum you have there. I was looking to see what portfolio it was a part of and could find nothing, so that may be something to look at.

[dastardly]

I think the best way to get a lot of original members is to start posting at some big forums with the link in your sig. Another thing that definitely helps is getting zealots and people completely addicted, or once you get enough members you could even have a referral contest, where you give some sort of award or status to the person who recruits the most active new members

And as you said you had been doing, affiliate affiliate affiliate!

[COBRAws]

I did not get any BOTM award but I get a 70% conversion from new visitors into registered members.

key is: be the first to give your members the content.

[delmarva]

I can tell you one thing, this guy can design EXCELLENT templates! He turned mine from crap to gold: http://www.atlanticanglers.com

[markp_2000]

I agree about marketing. We have done all sorts of cross promotions: other sites (including craigslist); dropping business cards at stores; writing articles about the content with small local papers (they are always looking for well written content) as well as writing for popular blogs with similar content. Everyone we have contacted has been open to the idea of cross promoting.

We started with a small group of core users that posted great content and it grew from there.

Although we are not a big-board, I think we will be there quickly.

Mark
www.hotcouponworld.com

[orban]

markp_2000: Sorry. The administrator has banned your IP address. To contact the administrator click here

Alright I wasn't even on your site, but I certainly won't go there again

[markp_2000]

I have no idea why you would be banned, especially by ip. I have only banned one ip and it was due to multiple hack attempts. You could pm you id and I could look into it if you want.

Mark

[hotcouponworld]

Originally Posted by orban

markp_2000: Sorry. The administrator has banned your IP address. To contact the administrator click here

Alright I wasn't even on your site, but I certainly won't go there again

There are a few email addys that our other Admin has banned because that seems to be where spam coming to the site is highly concentrated.

If you want to PM me or mark, we can set you up manually on the site.