For you fellas with the successful forums

How long did it take for you to start pulling in traffic. What methods did you use. Ive had my Sports Talk forum since December of 06. I started with Relynet and made the switch to VB. Ive purchased the vbseo stuff and its been about a month and i havent really had any new signups from search engines. I have almost 600 members (some of you guys get 600 signups in an hour im sure). What am I doing wrong here. Im not listed anywhere near the top 50 in my keywords of sports forum. But if I search for Sports and Off Topic forum in google im 1

my forum is Postgame Pub Sports and Off Topic Forum.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

thanx

[briansol]

There's 2343242323423423423 sports boards out there, nearly all with more memebers. Me, I'm going to sign up at the large site, not the n00b site.

UNLESS you offer something unique.

If your site is "just another forum" it will always be "just another forum".

Come up with an idea... browse the competition. see what they don't have, and build on that.

Me, I started a reference materials section. no other site in my competition had that. It worked.

[bitdefuser]

What Briansol is saying is true. You have to have something that others don't have in order to bring attention.

[Per-Aa]

my forum hit the 5k mark after around 5 months - we were the first Polish forum on the MMO game Lineage 2 and were listed on their official sites as a featured fansite - they basically did the job for us

then it grew to other MMO's

We have a strict policy that we do not allow any cheat posts, botting posts and private (illegal) server discussions and in that we are unique - the content is not polluted by guides and tricks which work only on bugged private servers

much people like that because we are free of forum trolls for most and kiddos who play on pirated servers as they cant afford to pay the monthly fee

[Hornstar]

I have a gaming site, and added a homework section ^^ no other gaming site had that, so what brian says, is very true. You need something unique to get more people to come, and you need to post useful content, until other people do.

[karlm]

I use a few addons from here to make the forum appealing. Yet, this doesnt' seem to attract new users.
My site is geared towards men's rights (e.g. dads being blocked from seeing kids for no good reason, feminism man-bashing but woman-bashing isn't allowed, etc.) and so, tends to attract only a few folks. Men's rights isn't something the general public consciensly think about often, until they're the one getting messed with by the government. So, some come in just to vent and quickly vanish once they've been offered 4 hrs a month with their child/ren, while others are seriously fed up of the way society is heading and so they are the keepers - the ones that return daily with headlines & new campaigns.

I'm in the process of splitting my forum up - so it uses different skins for different sections. Hopefully giving the impression of entirely different content per sub-forum. I have adsense on all pages (aside from register and other none-relevent pages) and offer a 1yr subscription of ad-free viewing by using user-group permissions to display/hide the ads.

I think the thing that makes my site unique - as others have agreed seems to be the key, is that when an opposing voice comes to my forum, they are not silenced or banned on site. If an MRA (men's rights activist) goes to a pro-feminist board, they tend to instantly ban or silence the MRA so he leaves without being able to voice his opinions... whereas, feminists are welcome to discuss any subject on my board.

I try to keep it all above the belt and pleasant, and so most folks will self-moderate (language wise).

I will say though, that for the first few months - I was about the only active person aside from a very limited pool of members. I enabled guest posting to 'entice' new members and just made sure I replied to as many posts as I could in order to keep the flow.

Nowadays, I can leave the forum only an hour or two and have several new posts. I guess I'm collecting about 1 member every 2days, most are lurkers looking for the links (that have been blocked to guests and search engines).

Anyway, I hope my waffle was helpful

[deezelpope]

I guess that all depends on your definition of what successful is, be it 10,000 inconsistent members with a lot of drama and fighting, or a few really good, faithful, loyal members with zero drama and fighting. Me, I consider drama-free and loyalty success. And now, I have new people from other boards wanting to join, even though they've no idea what my site is about...they just like the calm, friendly environment.

[JD45]

Originally Posted by briansol

There's 2343242323423423423 sports boards out there, nearly all with more memebers. Me, I'm going to sign up at the large site, not the n00b site.


UNLESS you offer something unique.


If your site is "just another forum" it will always be "just another forum".

Come up with an idea... browse the competition. see what they don't have, and build on that.

Me, I started a reference materials section. no other site in my competition had that. It worked.

Agreed^^^ Offer your members something else no one has to offer. They'll come if you're the only one that has it and there is a need.

[theFAILURE]

I have gotten most of my members from various news plugs (tv and web), along with Digg, slashdot, and Fark as well.

Not sure that a sports forum would get that type of attention.

[Frozen Tears]

Took me like maybe 1 or 2 months. Presently, i have 602K [and counting] members.