This Is How I Get Visitors & Members...But How Do I Get Posters?

[Drover]

I have a new forum (less than a month old). I'm getting XXX legitimate unique hits/day, and have 67 members.  I'm adding 3-5 members/day at this point.  I'm using the Download System mod to upload about 10 pdf ebooks per day on my forum's topic.  the mod also will optionally add a new topic post to the board you choose.  If you post to your site's Twitter account using your forum's feed (twitterfeed.com), you're spreading every download to Twitter.  This is where most of my traffic comes from.  I use software to add TARGETED followers, and am at about 700 now.  These followers come to my forum to download stuff.  they can download two, then have to register to get more.

The problem I'm having is that while people download the info and even return to download more, they don't post. I've tried polls, open-ended questions, controversy, copying popular questions from other forums - nothing seems to work.  Any ideas on stirring them up to post more?

[ApplianceJunk]

The download thing is a tricky one for us.

Our appliance repair service manual downloads are a popular item on our site.

Here is a example of one.
http://appliancejunk.com/forums/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=419

I use to have a daily download limit, but they were still free.

Late this afternoon I added this.

Start a new topic in our forum, share with us what your working on and we will share this service manual with you.
Or you can simply purchase the service manual download using the button below.

It's to early to tell if it will increase our post count in the forum, but it has already added to my paypal balance.

The technicians that help on our site can still download the service manual for free, but anyone else will have to post in the forum to get a free one or buy it as of now.

[TheListener]

What is ya forums link?

[Drover]

What is ya forums link?

http://nationalprepperexchange.com

[HappyGecko]

Guests are limited to two page views per day???!!!

I've never seen such a thing. . . . . . on any forum.  That might be your problem.

You will probably get more posters if you first draw them in, and then once they get sucked into a topic, they will want to put in their own two cents worth.

[ApplianceJunk]

I agree limited page views for guest is not a good thing unless your trying to get a higher bounce rate.

[ravenzmoon]

I think you will find no matter what most people go to a site to read.  Most don't want to become part of a group or well they lurk is the best way to put it.   

[Drover]

I think you're missing the point. The page limit thing isn't the problem. I don't have a problem getting them to register to be able to view more.  They are registering, which is the reason for that.  They just don't post.

[novill]

But with this modification the google bot can not crawl your site. 
Many people just want to read the content in your site, and if they find any content and conversations wich they like, then they respond.

[HappyGecko]

But with this modification the google bot can not crawl your site. 

True, very true.  I never thought of that.  How can you draw more people if Google can't point them to your site?

[Drover]

Google can crawl it fine.  That's not an issue.

[Xarcell]

After seeing what your site is about(I'm a prepper), I can tell you what would help alot.

If you were to embed youtube videos into a post, people would most likely comment on it. Most preppers I know abuse youtube, because a picture is worth a thousand words, but a video is worth 1 million words.

For example, if you posted a youtube video on how to skin a deer, or make colloidal silver, user's would most likely reply with a comment or question about the video.

NVM, after registering I seen that you already did this. I think your hiding too much from un-registered user's. The people that are registering, are not interested in posting. Usually, only 10% of your members post regularly