What is the normal grow for a medium or small size forum?

[deprueba]

Hi all,

Please, let me a question. I'm worried because I missed a lot of work creating my forum and after a month there are only 18 users suscribers.

It's a forum (in Spanish) devoted to the acoustic guitar, which is complemented by a blog, all with completely original and good quality content.

I do not know what will happen. I edited the robots.txt, I have discharged pages in Google, I subscribe to Google Webmaster Tools, Sitemaps have linked there, I installed Pretty Urls and other mods, but I still don't have subscribers, and that it is an issue with many fans to the acoustic guitar around the world.

And here are my questions:

- What is the normal growth medium or tiny forum in the first month?
- Is it normal for the evolution of my forum?
- Is there anything important I should have done and I have escaped?

Any advice or suggestions would be very grateful for my part, do not include the address because I do not think I do is spam. I ask the moderators permission to include it for obtain advice about graphics, etc.

Greetings!

[JohnS]

I don't think there is such a thing as normal growth for a forum. What you must have though are some committed members who will post/reply and good content to attract other users.
Google, whilst something it is good to do, is unlikely to draw many new members until the forum is well established with lots of posts and content, and even then only where the content is fairly unique and not in competition with thousands of other sites.
You have 18 members, if you are lucky half of them will be fairly serious, the other half probably visited never to come again. Of that half you may if you are very lucky have one or two who will help and contribute.
Use what you have, put up some more significant content and then contact the 18 and ask them to let thier friends know. I don't know what is your intention of the forum or your forum intends to do, answer queries, provide support, be a reference site, a collection of articles or what, but you need to get the site known and you have to rely on old and tried methods of advertising to do that, get your name known, are you a member of other similar groups?
Pass the word around, have you got linked YouTube, Facebook and Twitter sites, they all help attract in a few potential users. You have to work hard to get in the critical number of good users to get the site to go forward, having 10,000 members means nothing if none of them ever contribute, the critical thing is the number of members that actually post followed by the number that actually visit after the first time.
There are other posts on this forum with tips on how to get things moving, but it does require a lot of effort, putting it on Google and sitting back is not an option in my view.

[deprueba]

put up some more significant content

Thank you for your advices, please, what do you understand for "significant content"?

[JohnS]

Content that matches the purpose of your forum that is interesting for visitors and will encourage them to come back.
You say you have content, which is fine but that has now either been looked at or ignored by the 18 users, to get them back and possibly get them to recommend it to others you need something new.
Use the statistics to see what they have been looking at to give you an idea of what they are interested in and what you can add.
It depends on how much time and effort you can put in to it, but adding a few topics a day would be good and maybe when you have added 20 or 30 then contact them and say 'have you seen the new content, bring your friends' or something like that.

[deprueba]

Ok, thank you for the info, but, content in what format? In the post, in articles, images or perhaps everithing?

[JohnS]

It depends on your forum and what interests your visitors. That depends on what type of forum you are running, is it a support forum, an information forum or what? You will have to decide what content is needed based on experience of what is proving popular.

[Account Abandoned]

- What is the normal growth medium or tiny forum in the first month?

The question that can give you all the answers to you other questions

How active are you? On the first link in my signature, the admin forum... It is under 4 months old and from what I can tell, its the largest admin forum powered by SMF I accomplished this victory by being extremely active on my forum. I visited it everyday posting 5 to 10 topics, new topics mind you, in each section but mainly the "main niche" sections. Then I began membership population by conducting post exchanges on other admin forums and using Post Loop. All my topics gave people something to post to, I posted back and then developed conversations.

Then some people join through post exchanges and post loop and asked to be staff, I allowed it and got a regular member by doing so. Then I held a referral contest and let anyone participate including staff which was a pretty good idea. A staff member won the content with his 53 referrals

Now I don't do post loop and exchanges much anymore and most days, there are hundreds of new posts and topics each day on the forum.

Please note that you should start spreading your links too. Building back links will help. I look a lot of my newer members who join and they found me by search. You type in "admin forums" or "admin forum" in search and I am usually on the first page or so. In less than 4 months, my forum is pagerank 3 One tip on back links is to go to statistic sites and about my site type websites, put your URL in to see your stats and it automatically creates a page for your site and links it, easy back link.

Another form of backlinks, check out my latest article http://anotheradminforum.com/forum-articles/10-free-back-link-producers/

Good luck!

[Soumyananda]

Publicity is the better option from my point of view. Post daily updates related to economy, news an bollywood information. You can get better reply.

[deprueba]

Thank you for your advices. I've reading the link to Post Loop but I don't know really how woks. I will investigate...

[smartblogz]

hope postpoo works for you. it didnt work for me. i wont go close to them even with a 2000meter pole.

[deprueba]

hope postpoo works for you. it didnt work for me. i wont go close to them even with a 2000meter pole.

Sorry, I can't undesrtand your reply, please, let me know what do you mean...

[Account Abandoned]

Post Loop got me over 50 new members in a span of 7 days with 1000s of posts Of course I purchased points but if you keep your points up (by actively posting on other boards), it will work just the same for you without having to purchase anything.

[deprueba]

Post Loop got me over 50 new members in a span of 7 days with 1000s of posts Of course I purchased points but if you keep your points up (by actively posting on other boards), it will work just the same for you without having to purchase anything.

I will see this website. Thanks.

[donald321]

The admin zone has a forum only directory(pr4), you have to join the forum first but I have over 700 links to my forum in google webmaster from that directory and counting.

[deprueba]

The admin zone has a forum only directory(pr4), you have to join the forum first but I have over 700 links to my forum in google webmaster from that directory and counting.

Is this a website?

[donald321]

It is a forum with a directory attached to it.

[deprueba]

It is a forum with a directory attached to it.

Thank you, and... how does it work?

[Account Abandoned]

It is a forum with a directory attached to it.

Thank you, and... how does it work?

Its an admin forum. You can join and discuss forum admin stuff. They have a link directory which members may freely submit links to.