Webmaster Forum Advice

Well, if you are new, I would suggest cutting down on the amount of forums you have. It looks like you have 20+ forums going right now. Once you get tons of members and topics flowing, then you can expand. Also, the design is not the greatest.

Lastly, you have to have something unique to offer. What sets you apart from say, hmm...here?

I agree. You have a lot of forums!

When I started Sis-2-Sis there were 4 main forums. General, Computer, Misc. and a forum for girlie chat. Obviously that's not what you have your forums for, but, once we started growing people suggested what we needed and I made more sub-forums.

What are you using for your forum? We use vbulletin, it's great and has tons of options.

I agree with Sarah, the problem with new forums is that they do look empty and that can put people off! Plus you are up against some seriously stiff competition as there are lots of well established forums, like this one, that are on the exact same lines as yours. All I can suggest is that you somehow try to be offering something slightly different from all the rest and just visit other forums to promote it where you can.

Thanks for all of the advice.

I have slimmed down the forums considerably. What do think now?
http://www.searchbliss.com/forum/default.asp
Now it doesn't look so empty. As far as the design goes, I am still working on it. Thanks again.

It's better, but still a bit more than I would suggest for a forum just starting out. I would suggest, right now, to create one forum for each category you have at the moment. Instead of a category called "Coding Talk", just create a forum with that name, and it would include talk about all coding. Then, when you have a lot of topics in that forum, you can branch it out into the individual forums. I would suggest doing this with all of your forums right now.

If visitors see topics and posts and discussions they are interested in they are more likely to contribute. If your forum is not that active visitors may not even bother to register.

As others suggested start with a few categories and then when you get a decent amount of traffic you can add a few more. As the owner you must keep contributing to your forum by creating new topics and articles. Get into a routine of making a few posts everyday. Invite your friends to visit your forum and ask them to join and make a few posts too.

Now that I'm just looking at it. I see you cut down. I only had my forums open now for just over 5 months. And now have about 560 members. At first I had to start alot of topics and had a couple people I knew join and create topics, then each other would reply to them. Sounds dumb yes but it showed traffic. And without traffic no one signs up. After the 1st month I had over 100 members and now I'm getting about 5 new signups a day. And the sites only 5 months old. I also worked very very very hard on design. You need to get a good sharp design if your going to promote "webmaster"

Its like someone advertising professional legal work and there site was made by a 5 year old (not to say there are probally some very gifted webdesigner at 5 years old )

But if you don't have content then looks is very very important.

yep my 2 cents

Quick question, Why did you NOT use this http://www.searchbliss.com as your forum theme? That looks good.

I suggest you to advertise using Google Adwords. As you see, most often, forums are mostly subscribed to from the search engines.So, you need to get into the top of the search engine, which at this stage, you can only do so from Adwords. Of course, you'll lose some money in the beginning, but you can make up from advertising on your site using Adsense.

Um, I don't think that's really true. Firstly, I think there are a lot of opportunities for forum growth through other promotion methods. I don't necessarily think that SE's are the best (or only) way to go for forums - I think we get more of our quality members through other avenues actually. People who don't know they're looking for a forum but happen upon your site and decide to join.

Secondly, if you look at some of the adwords advertisers for these terms the quality isn't very good - obviously it's not working for them! So I would say that Adwords might not be a good option here.

Looking at this site - I don't think there is much to separate it from the competition. You're aligning yourself in a very competitive market. I can think of two very highly active SEO/Marketing focussed webmaster forums and I think it would be hard to tear people away from sites like that. You'd have to have a much better skin and more to entice users into the forums. Look at your competition and think about what you can do to set yourself apart.

The skin is the most obvious problem here - it's boring and not all that attractive. Is Snitz Forums the software you're running?? I've never heard of that one -it might be beneficial to run one of the more popular systems. Your members might be more familiar with it, you'd be able to find more pre-made skins or custom skin developers to work with, and you can interact with other users of the system and get some support that way.

You say you "only" have 8 members after 1 day - that's pretty good! It'll be slow going at first. Are you getting a significant amount of traffic? There are some things you could to to work on turning those visitors into members. There are two possible problems here: the first is that you're not getting enough traffic in the first place, the second is that you're getting traffic but not member conversions. knowing which problem you're having can help you to narrow your focus and figure out what you need to do to improve.

Check out these sites:

http://www.theadminzone.com
http://www.adminfusion.com

Thanks Megan for the advice. You make a lot of good points. I have some different forum topics in Q, but I don't want to overwhelm visitors.

In my forum, I was given some great advice to get members on my forum as follows:
referral competition.
contests/rewards., but they involve payng for referrals. This is a great idea, however, my wife can go into labor with our first child at any moment and I cannot afford to pay. We are now down to one income. We all have our anxieties, and this is a wonderful time for me despite finances. Is there any other way? This is aplea for help. Maybe I should just let it ride, but I've worked so hard. Sorry for all of the babble, but venting helps (like free theorapy) if there is such a thing.

babble away! I guess you need to focus on your tools, its really useful, and if many knew there was a site that has all these tools under one roof, then I dont know if you need a forum... I was a fan of your web tools until some of them bugged out...

Oh Im still a Fan mind you but I experienced problems with some of your tools, all I remember at this time is that when using your link exchange tool it doesnt show any results in whatever keyword...

I slowly making progress with the webmaster forums with both design and memberships. I may offer something for free for a certain number of posts, but I am worried they will not be relevant or helpful posts. Any suggestions?

If you offer something for free then make it like a contest that is relevant to the forums topic, why not make an article writing contest, with certain rules. Example best article of the month in a topic "SEO"...