Any forum owners on here?

taktikz

WF Veteran
Oct 22, 2008
1,480
13
0
Tampa, FL
Struggling to keep the community very active even with raffles.
It seems like asking the members what they want is the worst thing you can do.

For those that have experience with forums, what suggestions do you have?
 


they probably want something to talk about?
 
9 year forum owner.

If you have a community of good posters and the right culture, content happens without you having to push it all the time.

Figuring out who you good posters are and building the right culture is the trick.
 
Was waiting for this. It's a very niche forum and I believe it can be very profitable, still.

Forums are great and convert like crazy.

Instead of trying to give them what they want, or offering incentives to post, try challenging them, and even trolling them.

The people that are passionate, and probably a little bit insecure, will defend their point of view furiously. You can spark some great debates, which in turn can inspire others to get more involved.
 
Same as gayrilla said, ~9 year old forum in a super niche community. I think I mentioned a while back to someone here a good way to get more signups and participation is to get people to opt-in to something simple on their first visit (Steve Wagz ebook for example), convert them into actual members through email follow ups and then encourage further participation through email/auto-subscribing users to any posts they make.

That being said, if you have a shitty subject/niche, this won't help much. Needs to be a general niche (relatively) that generates questions and discussion naturally with forum members that want to help each other/share wisdom. WickedFire is an exception to this rule since nothing of value is posted yet the community thrives.
 
Hire pewep. People will sign up just to tell him to shut the fuck up.

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have you considered starting 6 or 7 bitcoin threads?

I actually did this on one of my forums that wasn't related to bitcoin at all. Added a coinbase banner into the rotation and then posted a thread speculating that bitcoin would reach $500 (this was a few months ago). Turned into a 12 page debate, got some signups from it, and forum activity was at a high.

@OP people on the internet love arguing. Give them stuff to argue about.
 
I actually did this on one of my forums that wasn't related to bitcoin at all. Added a coinbase banner into the rotation and then posted a thread speculating that bitcoin would reach $500 (this was a few months ago). Turned into a 12 page debate, got some signups from it, and forum activity was at a high.

@OP people on the internet love arguing. Give them stuff to argue about.

See, and you guys thought I was just being a sarcastic dick like usual.
 
if you aren't offering good free shit then you aren't doing it right

here are some suggestions
- free guides
- free proprietary software
- free advertisement (through a marketplace section or whatever)

raffles or whatever are pretty lame and temporary, nobody is going to stay around for that