Strategy Hard-working forum owners

[Shawn Gossman]

Most of us who have been running forums for a long time know that growing them isn't and will never be an overnight process.

It takes work. Hard work. Sometimes you have to bust your butt to make a forum work.

When you do this, and it starts to all come together, how does it make you feel?

Personally, I love the feeling I get from watching a forum at 0 posts 0 members grow to a community, big and small, where you can expect new content the next day.

Do you feel that way, too, or is not that big of a deal for you?

 

[Bawse]

It takes more than hard work. You must be dedicated, forums usually grow slow unless you have a great promotion strategy, and a budget to advertise.

You also need to stay motivated to update your community on a daily basis at least that's my approach with my forum. I consider it my hobby/job that will pay my bills in the future.

I grown my forum for free in a lot of ways, but I do pay/invest with on going promotions to help my community reach new heights.

 

[Smithy]

I am having this problem with my forum right now.
Starting a new general discussion forum is one of the hardest ones as there's a lot of these forums about.

The only way of me getting user activity at the moment is doing forum exchanges which is helps a lot.
Even if it takes me a few years to get my forum active I'll do it.

 

[Bawse]

I am having this problem with my forum right now.
Starting a new general discussion forum is one of the hardest ones as there's a lot of these forums about.

The only way of me getting user activity at the moment is doing forum exchanges which is helps a lot.
Even if it takes me a few years to get my forum active I'll do it.

A lot of forum owners that do post exchanges are more than willing to do exchanges with general discussion forums. I am one of them. PM me if your interested.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I am having this problem with my forum right now.
Starting a new general discussion forum is one of the hardest ones as there's a lot of these forums about.

The only way of me getting user activity at the moment is doing forum exchanges which is helps a lot.
Even if it takes me a few years to get my forum active I'll do it.

I feel that this is the best way to get your community to grow and keep growing! I continue to do this though I need to do it more often than I do. I used to give up right away when working on forums when I was younger since I wouldn't give it time to grow and I also didn't know how to promote my sites either. I used Facebook mainly, which that won't get you anything it seems.