Advertising/promotion/getting the site out there..

[toups]

Just wondering if anyone has some good tips or tricks for advertising a site to get it more members & activity.. Currently have ~150 members with mid 20s being active daily & definitely wanting more.. just can't seem to find a good way to get more people

[LiroyvH]

Perhaps advertising on SMF will help you out?
http://www.simplemachines.org/about/advertise.php

[toups]

Perhaps advertising on SMF will help you out?
http://www.simplemachines.org/about/advertise.php

Mainly wanting ways that doesn't cost alot, if it was like $10 for a month or something that would be fine, already done a couple of those.. but that's too much for me It's a non-profit site so.. not wanting to spend a lot of money on it

[LiroyvH]

Well I dont think you will draw alot of attention without advertising.
Otherwise you will have to rely completely on mouth-to-mouth advertising by yourself and your members, or a possible find with Google.

None of those methods guarantees your site will come up.

[toups]

Well I dont think you will draw alot of attention without advertising.
Otherwise you will have to rely completely on mouth-to-mouth advertising by yourself and your members, or a possible find with Google.

None of those methods guarantees your site will come up.

I am advertising & such, just not ones that cost $100 for 1 month.. don't have that kind of money to spend on a non-profit website heh

[Caliope]

I run a forum as a non-profit site. In fact I generate no income at all, I refuse to have adsense etc.

I have a fairly regular posting group and that has come through patience (over 2 years) and trying to find topics that people will want to discuss.

Recently I set up a quiz that 6 different forums are competing in. Each forum now has links to all participating forums which has helped drive traffic. Another plus is I have gained 5 new members and other forums have picked up a few.

It takes a lot of time and effort, but it has been fun and we are now looking at running it as a bi-annual event.

[Pali]

Register on as many discussion sites you can and put your sites banner as a signature.Then you may get a few more people looking.Also google will index the links and could help with ranking since it adds up the number of unique urls it finds on sites linked to your own.

[ApplianceJunk]

Content is king. Get more content on your site.
You will need to write it yourself.

Google is your friend.

I did a google search for your site and you only have 62 pages with google.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.open-designs.org%2F&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images

Check out Google Web Tools

www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Also at first I was not sure this was your site.
http://www.open-designs.org/

When I first seen the 468x60 banner in your sig line here I thought it was a paid SMF ad and did not click on it.
From my experience people are more likely to click on a simple text link then a banner.

Include your url in your forum profile so the small globe icon shows up under your username in your post.

[toups]

Content is king. Get more content on your site.
You will need to write it yourself.

Google is your friend.

I did a google search for your site and you only have 62 pages with google.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.open-designs.org%2F&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images

Check out Google Web Tools

www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Also at first I was not sure this was your site.
http://www.open-designs.org/

When I first seen the 468x60 banner in your sig line here I thought it was a paid SMF ad and did not click on it.
From my experience people are more likely to click on a simple text link then a banner.

Include your url in your forum profile so the small globe icon shows up under your username in your post.

I'm registered on google with the site.. submitted about 20 sitemaps to it.. still has same amount of pages on google so... yeah
And.. more people aren't more likely to click a text link for a design website.. you can't show design in just a text link =\

[ApplianceJunk]

I'm registered on google with the site.. submitted about 20 sitemaps to it.. still has same amount of pages on google so... yeah

Interesting, we only have two site maps. One for the forum and one for the blog.

How old is your site?

[TheDel]

I used myspace. I had already used to to find people with the same interests anyway. I few months later, I started my site(which is also a non profit) and just sent out a bulletin. Then after awhile a created a myspace for the site itself and would reach out to people who may have missed the original bulletins or who havent been around.

[toups]

I used myspace. I had already used to to find people with the same interests anyway. I few months later, I started my site(which is also a non profit) and just sent out a bulletin. Then after awhile a created a myspace for the site itself and would reach out to people who may have missed the original bulletins or who havent been around.

Never used myspace & never will, don't support it at all, giant waste of time & place for stalkers t hang out pretty much.

[TheDel]

I used myspace. I had already used to to find people with the same interests anyway. I few months later, I started my site(which is also a non profit) and just sent out a bulletin. Then after awhile a created a myspace for the site itself and would reach out to people who may have missed the original bulletins or who havent been around.

Never used myspace & never will, don't support it at all, giant waste of time & place for stalkers t hang out pretty much.

Well don't knock something until ya try it. Its not all stalkers and its not like they are all in one place like a forum. There's plenty of quality people there too. Geez- my sister in law asked me to joined facebook way back and I asked what it was......she says "a mature myspace"  so I tried it and next ya know people are sending me pokes, and smacks- yeah real mature.

You dont have to keep it- just use it to find members. I did the same for my old forums using AOL and Yahoo profile searches. 

[ApplianceJunk]

toups,

How's it been going with google?

I started a new site Monday, http://statelotteryblog.com
It only took google 14 hours to index 8 pages from our one site map we submitted.

I just checked google now and we have 33 pages on google after only 4-5 days of the site being online.

Maybe we just get lucky with google.

[starcad]

I see several really good ideas posted, you just have to take advantage of what you have to work with.  I, personally, ( please don't take this wrong ) don't like clicking on banners and prefer text links when browsing a forum.  But, just to see I clicked on your ad banner.  Really nice looking site but I kinda find it funny your asking questions in a Simple Machines forum when your running V-Bulletin as your forum software.

[ApplianceJunk]

toups,

Your site has been loading really slow for me today.