How did your forum take off?

[MikeD]

I am just wondering method worked best for getting members to your forum (i.e. search engine, advertising, referrals from friends, etc.). Intially I told a bunch of my friends about my forum and asked them to check it out, but only a handful actually bothered to sign up, then then never posted (that really helps). So at this point I am pretty much going to depend on search engines.

One other thing.... how long did it take your forum before it really started get going, like maybe where you had more than just a handful of members who where not your friends? A few weeks? Months? Years? This is my first time with a forum, so I am not sure what to expect. Thanks :)

[b2w]

I made a lot of friends at a board that was admin-less (two of us were super mods with not too many rights). We got tired of him not being there so we took it upon ourselves (four of us) and created a new board. We took about 15 ladies with us and the rest was history. That day was 2/16/06 and we have, I think 188 members (after purging quite a few times) and we have over 80k in posts. And we did it by word of mouth...I'm just now working on advertising and SEO and other stuffs. It's so hard going this route (the SEO thing), but it's a must. So basically, we started by word of mouth.

Getting people to post is not easy, but we keep making threads and we post and it gets them to post.

And also, if you got competition you have to try to be better and you have to have your own style to succeed. Anybody else agree with my last statement?

[MikeD]

188 members, wow that's pretty good just based on word of mouth. Although I guess it helped that you were able to bring people over from the other board. I hope I have 188 members after 6 months, lol...

[b2w]

188 members, wow that's pretty good just based on word of mouth. Although I guess it helped that you were able to bring people over from the other board. I hope I have 188 members after 6 months, lol...

We didn't want our own board, but the Admin was gone. He checks in about once every 6 or 7 months. We needed so many changes. I think, as an Admin, you should be active in your board because it shows people you care about the subject, you have interest in your board and that you care to talk to them. That's my two cent.

[MikeD]

He checks in about once every 6 or 7 months.
That's a long time to go... doesn't sound like he's too interested. I've been trying to log on to mine at least once a day, although I don't post every day. But I agree if the admin is never there you start to wonder if the board has been abandoned or left for dead. Not much reason to join a forum like that...

[b2w]

That's a long time to go... doesn't sound like he's too interested. I've been trying to log on to mine at least once a day, although I don't post every day. But I agree if the admin is never there you start to wonder if the board has been abandoned or left for dead. Not much reason to join a forum like that...

I stay logged on between 9am - Midnight...I'm not always sitting at my desk, but that let's them all know I'm there :p . If I can't be I let them know I'll be gone and when I'm coming back and then there are three other Admins and at least one of us is on at any given time. I know it sounds like a lot, but I'm trying not to fail. In the business I'm in people are hoping we fail. I can't let that happen.

[Sonnie]

I think staff is one of the most important things you can have in a forum. We started out with several mods. Fortunately I made friends with some pretty smart guys in similar forums. I rounded up as many as possible to start with in order to provide the forum with threads and posts. As member started flowing in, it was important for us to have mods to quickly answer questions. Since every mod can't be available 24/7, we have several so that hopefully one of them can answer a question or reply to a post quickly. As we grow, we'll continue to make sure we have plenty of staff to help out.