Help Webmaster gods!

[djyox]

I have been running the website

www.kartforum.com

for a while now, (like a month) and I can't get anyone to sign up and post. I believe its because I am not getting enough hits.

Or is it something else...if anyone would like to dig around on my site, and give me some ideas of what to do to make it more appealing...or even make it more appealing to search engines...I'm all ears!

I just signed up to a link sharing program, and am putting phpAdsNew on my site(just gotta tweek it a bit) that way I can put banners into a rotation.

Ideas please....anyone? I would really like this site to take off even if its in the next month or two....

Or any ideas on linking sharing? I've viewed a few diffrent sharing sites, and they all don't look that great...they all want me to link back to them...and ontop of that they all have rules of where the banner MUST be and crap like that. So ideas please!!!

 

[Canuckkev]

I'm sort of in the same situation, only I've spend some $$ on advertising. Not a "Kart" forum, but the same thing applies.

First thing I noticed was a LOT of sub-categories. My advice would be to start with just a few, then grow.

Also, you need to get a lot of targetted traffic. If you find a good website related to your forum, contact the webmaster suggesting a link-exchange. It helps in two ways : 1) You get people clicking through the link. 2) Boosts your search engine ranking.

Those are just a few tips that I think could help.

 

[Wojtek]

If you have some articles on your website, make a link to a forum in your forum where people cn leave their comments (guests can post)

make up some advantages of beeing a member and increase your targetted traffic, as canuckkev said.

 

[djyox]

any ideas on what I could offer? I was thinking of making a credit system that you earn credit to buy things for the forums, or stickers?

same deal they got going on at DTC forums

Any ideas? I'm trying to share links, And I'm also offering my forum for websites (kart related) that don't have a forum, and I would put a new catagory and forum with their name on it...but no bites this way...I'm sure they all think its a scam or it will cost them money or visitors in the long run. But the way I saw it is it would send them visitors that don't know about their website that know about mine....kinda like a link sharing. So i dunno...


Byt yeah let me know some ideas of what to offer...or what do you offer for your site?

 

[Decker]

You've got a great idea with the great domain name so it's a bit of a pity when you don't get the visitors.

It can take ages for it to get around unless you put some time into it, visit other forums, even the manufacturers sites to see if they have links for official 'fan' or whatever sites.

Use Google and search as much as you can - sign up and post with your site address in your forum sig.

Last but not least just visit other sites that may even have members of forums or anything online that may be of interest to the members there.

Try ours in the Chit - Chat section @ http://forums.ctrl-alt-deli.com there's also a sale and want for bike and car section so there may well be some folks from there take an interest.

 

[IgotDreams]

Forums are very hard to start initially and will just take off like a rocket once you a good amount of people chatting on a daily basis.

Your problem is you do not have allot of members and or posts. When you get a targetted person to come, they see a dead web site and move on.

You need to gather a large OPT in mailing list of targetted people. Find other Kart related web sites that may have mailing list and ask them to be an affiliate with you. Put their ads on your site, you have a very strong Google page rank of a PR 5 so they will probably like that.

I would create about 10 different logins and fluff the site with fake posts. But not one liners. REAL content. Go find an article on how to fix a certain problem. Then sign in as person A.

Person A. Talks about the problem.
Person B. Says I have had the same problem but took it to a mechanic
Person C. Says I need help as well and gives a simliar scenario.
Person D. Solves the problem and references an article online and where to get additional help.

Do this in a few places.

Next maybe you can give away something, like free stickers or something to new people that come to the site. A little incentive to get them there. Or if you can afford it, a special Kart Part that is valuable.

Then go to other web sites that are related and ask them for a link to you. Give them a free ad or something. No need to trade links, just give them graphic ads. This way search engines will not think your just trying to get recpriocal links. Also tell those people about your give away.

Next mass email all those people, so you can get them all interacting on the same days. This should jump start your site. I would follow up with my link exchanges with industry related web sites.

RECAP Follow these steps in order;

1. Create A Free Give Away Campaign
2. Find Email List
3. Create a target start date (a couple weeks away at least)
4. Fluff Site
5. Find Link Partners
6. Update fluff right before the start date
7. mass promote in one day and tell link partners to turn on their ads
8. Google and Overture ad campaigns if you can afford it

That should do it. The most important thing is to get numerous people to the site in a small time frame. You can also allow guest logins to help the posting conversion and the turn it off later.

Also if your site has an archiving feature, do not archive, let it go until you really need to archive because you have so many people posting, you will know when to do that.

I hope that has helped!