Free way to get members.

[MrCjTheFish]

Would this be allowed?
Hey all, So here is my though. Can this be a official sign up for sign up thread?

Here are the standards.

You must join the persons site
Post 2 topics.
Post 2 replys.
IN RETURN
the person joins
posts 2 topics
and 2 replies.


If this is not allowed here, if I created a site like this, would any of you join? Let me know!

My site is www.chatterpit.com

PM me if you want to exchange

[trebul]

In my opinion this won't really help.

[live627]

would any of you join?

Certainly not me!

[trebul]

Well, Its not really for you if you have an active forum, its for new forums who need a jumpstart.

Even for new sites your better off finding people that will keep coming back and are actually interested in your forums topic.

[Paul_Pauline]

Search is your friend   

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=274087.0

[Kindred]

post excanges are a stupid idea, IMO...


CONTENT is the way to get your site noticed.  NICHE content is the way to get people interested in your site...

post exhanges really don't contribute anything since most people only join a site which they are interested in the topics and will post...   and if they are not interested, asking them to join (just so you will join their site and post 2 posts which probably are not part of the niche community anyway) is just plain silly.

[DoctorMalboro]

A free way? Mmmm... blackmail them.

[rd]

I love how you have a forum, with almost no post... But already have all the money stuff setup. Advertising rates, premium membership, username change costing money, etc.

This is the recipe for failure.

[YogiBear]

A free way? Well, there's always [whisper]spam[/whisper] only nowadays be sure to call it marketing. 

Be prepared to get thrown off a few sites though. 

[rd]

There has never been a forum that was successful, when it started out and already asked for money...

[YogiBear]

There has never been a forum that was successful, when it started out and already asked for money...

That's a point. It can take some time to establish credibility on the net before doing that. I know of one site which charges folk UK£10 to have an avatar but it has been going around nine years and some of its members are daft enough to pay it as it also gives them access to...ahem...mature content photos.

[Kindred]

post excanges are a stupid idea, IMO...

they have been tried before and they always fail.

you posted in chit-chat, looking for opinions....   this isn't the support area. (and your question/concept is not a support sort of thing anyway)

[rd]

Im not expecting payments. Its just there for the future. 

Your already planning, not a good sign... You probably think your gonna be the next big thing Hate to tell you, I used to think the same thing and believe me, I've seen this before, it will fail. No offense, people told me this, I didn't believe them but now I wish I did.

[rd]

whats your forum?

Many. Some with thousands of members, others with hundreds, a few that are very fail.. I count hundreds of member forum as fail too though.

[rd]

Sounds like, if you have one with thousands of members, that you do have a successful forum. Just because of that, does not mean you need to go on a power trip and bash small, upcoming communities that, have not even been started for a week, and already have a hundred plus members.

Just stating a fact.


I looked at your forum and was like WTF? It's really ugly.





100 members and what, like 2-3 of them post, probably all admin accounts But, I am wondering if you know someone named gri? Well, let me tell you something about him. He had a general forum too I believe, had over 13,000 members (I think) but the guy was talking to himself or posting threads  from other forums. 99% of his members were pretty much all bots with fake names that seem real.

When users don't post it usually means, they're is something wrong. Also, I'm surprised people even joined your forum, looks horrible, imho.

Yes, I know I'm harsh but that's a nice way of telling you to be more specific with your forum and also FIX THE THEME, because I already know the member count is BS.

[mashby]

It's not a theme issue per se. It's a www. issue:
http://www.chatterpit.com/
versus
http://chatterpit.com/

No interest in chatter though. A few lines in your .htaccess and you'd be off to the races.

Code Select Expand

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^chatterpit.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://chatterpit.com/$1 [R=301,L]Something along the lines of that.

[Wally.]

A friendly word of advice, kill 3 quarters of your boards - they aren't needed. For example why do you need Baseball, Football, Basketball and General Sports boards when you only have like 1 topic between all of them? If you want an area for sports make one board called Sports. Lots of people make the huge mistake of trying to look like a Big Board when they first start. It only hurts your chances, BBs have 1,000s of posts to fill those areas, new boards don't. Every time you create a board with no content you make your site look more like a ghost town. You have 36 boards and only 49 topics!

This is what I recommend for your categories and boards - 8 boards total. Then make sure you have 0 empty boards.


Welcome!
-   Introductions
-   Announcements
-   Questions and Suggestions
Chatter
-   Arts and Entertainment
-   Games
-   Random Chatter
-   Sports
-   Technology

[Kindred]

good advice, Wally...


on 40konline, we only add a new board when there is a  significant number of thread on that topic in one of the other boards such that the threads for the general board topic are being lost in the mix...    at which point we create a new board and move the appropriate threads.

i.e. Create a General Sports board.
get discussions going.
when you have 30 or more conversations about football and football teams going, THEN create the football talk board and move those threads out of "General Sports"

[MrCjTheFish]

So I should make the others a subforum of technology?

[Kindred]

you missed the point.

You should start with 4-5 boards...   only add additional boards when the amount of discussion on a topic demands it's own talk-space.

[wcharlot]

wow that can be a win-win solution. but is it really effective?

[MrCjTheFish]

yeah I was just about to ask, does it work?

[Drunken Clam]

whats your forum?

.. I count hundreds of member forum as fail too though.

That statement is typical of 'ePenis' mentality!

The number of Members or indeed the number of Posts a member has does not equal 'fail', in my opinion.

My forum has been running, in one form or another, for 8/9 years and I have just 57 members.

Quality, not quantity = Successful. 

[rd]

"I count hundreds of members as fail too because judging by post count, they are either bouncing members or automated bots"