[The Elite]

I honestly don't mean to offend anyone with this, but I have some spare time at the moment and feel that I should give some advice to new webmasters. As I just said, I do not mean to offend anyone. If you think that my honesty WILL offend you, then please stop reading, if you keep an open mind and you're willing to withstand my opinion as to why your forum is failing (if it's not, stop reading!)

Why your forum is failing!
Lets think of your forum more as a resource, not as a forum. IF you ever plan to make your forum succeed, your traffic will NOT be from advertisements, your traffic will be from GOOGLE (and Bing, if anyone uses that). Your forum is not something where you should tell people to join it, it's something that people should WANT to join. You need to imagine your forum from the point of view of a random visitor, not as a owner. YOU want your forum to succeed, THEY want something they can rely on for information. Therefore, instead of mindlessly begging randoms to join your forum, you need to offer something unique. No one wants to join your forum with 3 posts, 5 members and a countless number of empty forums. Your visitors would be more inclined to see forums where they're all filled with SOME content and some members. This can mean you posting countless threads, either way, that works. Making accounts (around 5) and having discussions between accounts is also a good way to generate traffic.

Read the rest of the article here.
http://crueltruth.com/?p=26

[Mr.PrashantGarje]

VEry nice article there I loved it yeah!!

[Ohya]

This is a very nice thread mate. I'm sure it will help many people in the future. Good job!

[SawCyanic]

I seriously wish I could give you +3 rep now OP.

[iLee]

You forgot some pieces. No-one's going to joni a forum that take hours to load.
No-one going to join a forum if there's no content,
No-one will join the forum if you beg.

[i9.]

I think a tiny amount of wee just came out :3

Well done sir! =]

[Mordalum]

The Elite, is absolutely right. People make forums not following very important stuff.

They just fail also after a certain amount of investment thinking that there forum would be successful!

[luft]

your traffic will NOT be from advertisements

I disagree, a paid ad on Google will increase your traffic. You might think nobody clicks on Sponsored Links but a lot of people who use the internet don't know the difference between the sponsored links and the acctual ranked results. If you are opening a computing or internet forum then obviously a sponsored link may not be the best option because most of the potential users are "savvy" enough to know what sponsored links are, but it is unwise to disregard advertising as a form of traffic, as it is one of the biggest. Do you remember the link at the bottom of HackForums to that gaming forum a while ago? That forum really took off considering it was a gaming forum, and that was almost completely down to the advertising campaign.

[Amazing]

This was a good read from a webmaster that actually knows what he's doing, excellent post. 🙂

[LurkerHole]

@OP : Nice read, I kinda dislike new forums having no content with a lot of categories and having only one member to spam all of it.

I disagree, a paid ad on Google will increase your traffic. You might think nobody clicks on Sponsored Links but a lot of people who use the internet don't know the difference between the sponsored links and the acctual ranked results. If you are opening a computing or internet forum then obviously a sponsored link may not be the best option because most of the potential users are "savvy" enough to know what sponsored links are, but it is unwise to disregard advertising as a form of traffic, as it is one of the biggest. Do you remember the link at the bottom of HackForums to that gaming forum a while ago? That forum really took off considering it was a gaming forum, and that was almost completely down to the advertising campaign.

That may vary mate. The competition is seemingly tough after all.

[The Elite]

Glad everyone enjoyed the article. :)

[jacobm]

The "I'm a king webmaster, I can install MyBB, therefore, I am better than you." is so true of this site..

[CALIFORNIAN]

This is definitely information most webmasters/administrators whom are new to forums should look into.

[TheUninvited]

thats an awesome tutorial please read your private msg buddie.

[jacobm]

I memed this just now, thaught it would be appropriate.
[img]http://www.webpagescreenshot.info/img/424797-519201145245am.png[/img]