How To Advertise Your ProBoard

[windu01]

I am having a very hard time trying to find people to join my site. I have made a myspace page and am spreading it by word of mouth but it seems that it is not helping that much. I love my forum and want it to have loyal members but that seems like it will never happen right now.

[kelendria]

I have the same problem (& also a MySpace page!), I've had mine a long time (3 years tomorrow!) & have done every advertising stint available.
I seem to have lost a lot of loyal members but can't seem to find any new.
If you haven't already, try affiliating with lots of different forums, add to search engines & make catchy signatures.
If you've done all that & it's not working, I don't know what to suggest, except we're in the exact same boat

[The Boss]

lol same here....but i dont know how to affiliate

[James]

A tip on affiliating - Do not affiliate with sites of the same topic as yours. You should be competing with them, not risking loosing members to them. It's best to look at boards that have a similar interest but not the same, that way should your members join their board they will be likely to stick around with yours as it's different in it's topics. For instance; If you own a general football forum don't affiliate with other football forums. Search out boards that have a loose empahasis on the general topic of football but who's main emphasis is on a specific part of the game. For instance say a Manchester United Board. That way all their members will be football fans, but not all your members will be Manchester United fans (and therefore wont leave your site)

[gazey]

If you run an RPG site, then its always worth affiliating with other RPG sites, both sites will have something in common, but be able to offer different things. If you run a general chat site, you could pretty much affiliate with any site, as people will always want to just be able to go somewhere and discuss absolutely anything

[James]

gazey said:

If you run an RPG site, then its always worth affiliating with other RPG sites, both sites will have something in common, but be able to offer different things. If you run a general chat site, you could pretty much affiliate with any site, as people will always want to just be able to go somewhere and discuss absolutely anything

But remember people aren't going to have unlimited ammounts of time, which means they aren't able to visit all their sites

[El ZØRRØ™ - Ron Paul in 08]

nationofjamzinia said:

A tip on affiliating - Do not affiliate with sites of the same topic as yours. You should be competing with them, not risking loosing members to them. It's best to look at boards that have a similar interest but not the same, that way should your members join their board they will be likely to stick around with yours as it's different in it's topics....

Not true. Affiliate with unrelated sites and who does that help? If your site isn't good enough to keep the users you have a problem. I advertise most of my competition on my sites, i'm open and I don't lose any traffic. The links get hits but I still keep all my users.

[James]

dw02 said:

nationofjamzinia said:

A tip on affiliating - Do not affiliate with sites of the same topic as yours. You should be competing with them, not risking loosing members to them. It's best to look at boards that have a similar interest but not the same, that way should your members join their board they will be likely to stick around with yours as it's different in it's topics....

Not true. Affiliate with unrelated sites and who does that help? If your site isn't good enough to keep the users you have a problem. I advertise most of my competition on my sites, i'm open and I don't lose any traffic. The links get hits but I still keep all my users.

Try reading all of my post. If you bothered to read my example you'd understand.

[El ZØRRØ™ - Ron Paul in 08]

nationofjamzinia said:

dw02 said:

Not true. Affiliate with unrelated sites and who does that help? If your site isn't good enough to keep the users you have a problem. I advertise most of my competition on my sites, i'm open and I don't lose any traffic. The links get hits but I still keep all my users.

Try reading all of my post. If you bothered to read my example you'd understand.

I read your post and disagreed. I link to direct competition all the time, it works very well!

[Lord of Fire]

dw02 said:

nationofjamzinia said:

Try reading all of my post. If you bothered to read my example you'd understand.

I read your post and disagreed. I link to direct competition all the time, it works very well!

I can't help but agree with you, Zorro.

I used to affiliate on a lot of similar sites and some members of other forums signed up at ours as well. Not all of them stayed, but that's probably more due to the flamewars we've had a while ago than that the site is too similar to the others.

I think as long as you keep your board different enough from the rest, it doesn't matter if you affiliate with competition.

[James]

Your not getting my intention but I really can't be bothered to argue as you clearly know everything Zorro. I thought this section was meant to be for opinion.

Not true.

Clearly I was wrong.

[El ZØRRØ™ - Ron Paul in 08]

nationofjamzinia said:

Your not getting my intention but I really can't be bothered to argue as you clearly know everything Zorro. I thought this section was meant to be for opinion.

I don't know everything but in web marketing, promotion and the like I am very familiar and active.

This forum is for opinions, apparently you can't take someone disagreeing. You still have your opinion and I have mine. Nothing to get tizzy about.

[Mara]

agentorange2 said:

dw02 said:

I read your post and disagreed. I link to direct competition all the time, it works very well!

I can't help but agree with you, Zorro.

I used to affiliate on a lot of similar sites and some members of other forums signed up at ours as well. Not all of them stayed, but that's probably more due to the flamewars we've had a while ago than that the site is too similar to the others.

I think as long as you keep your board different enough from the rest, it doesn't matter if you affiliate with competition.

I agree.... There's no reason to think that someone won't join your forum because they're already joined one that is similar.

If yours has more to offer than others of the same (your competition), then perhaps you can get some members to switch over.

[Ben]

Xkamelx, you might want to add stumbleupon in your advertisements submission list.

[myke]

benji19 said:

Xkamelx, you might want to add stumbleupon in your advertisements submission list.

Not really my job anymore, but if you provide me with a link, I'll go a head and add it, since it's you asking, friend.