[Forum] How long does it take to build up a forum members and posting Im getting a little

[karenyvonne]

Disapointed that mine hasnt taken off as quick as I woudve liked, ok i have 37 members
which isnt bad i guess and a couple have posted, i have put my heart and soul into
this forum, but i am starting to think facebook has won, and thinking of selling on my
licence.
I have done all i can to promote my forum, just that certain friends said they would
do this that and the other to help but they have done nothing. So am at a loss what
to do now

[Trevor Hannant]

Take a look through this forum for ideas which may help:

Managing your Community

[karenyvonne]

Thank you Trevor

[Ramsesx]

Disapointed that mine hasnt taken off as quick as I woudve liked, ok i have 37 members
which isnt bad i guess and a couple have posted, i have put my heart and soul into
this forum, but i am starting to think facebook has won, and thinking of selling on my
licence.
I have done all i can to promote my forum, just that certain friends said they would
do this that and the other to help but they have done nothing. So am at a loss what
to do now

Nowadays it's really, really hard to succeed in running a forum. In every niche there are competitors with many years in advance, more members, many posts etc. and it's not easy to attract people being active in a forum without lot of activity.
How long do you run your forum?

[setishock]

You're not alone hun. I've been beating my head on the keyboard for several years. But I haven't given up and you shouldn't either. Building up a member base takes time. One day you're going to log in and be surprised at what's going on.

Oh and one thing I find that really works is putting a link in the sig here and vb org. Matter of fact any forum you belong to, if it's allowed, put your forum link in your sig.

[karenyvonne]

thanks for the great advice guys, its doin well i guess lol, ive only had it for 2 months now, and got 37 members
who have posted. I have a problem with the sig it still has the forum php in it where it shud just say .com lol

[karenyvonne]

This is what happens when i post my url>>>>>>>>>>>>>> http://www.theinfinitematrix.com/forum.php

[donald1234]

Hi, you don't need the php part for a link http://www.theinfinitematrix.com will be sufficient.

Do you know that guests can't see any content despite your welcome message saying that they can?

[whitey10tc]

A suggestion to increase activity, open up the forum to a limited guest viewing. If I came across your forum, I would skip past it because I can't even see what it's got and if I might be interested.
There are some plugins on vb.org that will limit guest viewing to x amount of pages, posts, threads, etc.
Other suggestions, Halloween's over show that your forum is maintained, your logo says prevbb, copyright lower right corner is the same, but copyright lowerleft matches your url. What I'm saying is be consistent, I would be confused and Leary as to what the forum really is. prevbb or The infinate matrix? Change your meta description to what your forum is about, you currently have

This is a discussion forum powered by vBulletin. To find out about vBulletin, go to http://www.vbulletin.com/ .

which again doesn't tell anyone what the forum is.

We opened our forum in Jan 2010, after another forum went offline. The founding four members had alot of that info so we were able to populate the forum with over 2,000 posts in the first day. Within a week we had grown to over 200 members. Now almost 2 yrs later we gain 30-40 members a day. But it has slowed down alot. But we have always been consistent with the name and googlebots are a permanent fixture.

[China-Rising]

I don't think there is any secret to running a successful forum. One of mine I would certainly say it's successful, we don't have millions of members, but we have a very solid member base who post daily. Another of my forums I shut down earlier this year as it was going no where and I tried everything to get it going. But there was far too much competition out there for what I was doing and the competition had some massive established sites with 1000's of members.

As long as you have a few dedicated members who post daily and you put in a bit of hard work then hopefully it should grow.

Always remember though that having 1000's of members isn't a sign of success if half of those members don't post. I would rather have 10 users who post daily than 1000 members who don't post at all.

[steven s]

Always remember though that having 1000's of members isn't a sign of success if half of those members don't post. I would rather have 10 users who post daily than 1000 members who don't post at all.

My forum is +10 years old. I have around 300 members who login at least once every 10 days.
I have 3 other forums that I launched a years ago that have gone nowhere mainly because of my lack of promotion.

[China-Rising]

My forum is +10 years old. I have around 300 members who login at least once every 10 days.
I have 3 other forums that I launched a years ago that have gone nowhere mainly because of my lack of promotion.

10 years is a long time and I'd say 300 members is fine as well, they post, that's the main thing.

[steven s]

10 years is a long time and I'd say 300 members is fine as well, they post, that's the main thing.

I'm happy with what we have.
I think everyone needs to decide what is a successful forum is. Each person has their own opinion.
The topic plays such a big role.

[karenyvonne]

Thanks guys, i dont know how to do away with it quite annoying lol

[karenyvonne]

Now have 40 members and they are starting to post yay