I never thought I had to do this, but running my forum makes no sense anymore because I am not getting new members. A couple of members join and don't post or only make 1 post and leave. I have had more than 20 members who post regularly but they have found another, more active forum so they boycotted mine. If you've been following my latest threads, I've been working on SEO, without much positive result. I still have about 6 months to go on my Godaddy hosting (my site is only 6 months old.) Should I wait another 6 months or close it now? I am mostly leaning towards closing it now. If I choose to close it now, what would I have to do? Remove everything from ftp?
You really should try to find a way to build traffic to your website, try for example link exchange (not really that helpful) or try to post useful things on other forums and add a "sexy" link to your forum in your signature! People who will find you interesting will definitely go to your forum..
If you have any kind of "restrictions" or "advertisements", you may need to take them off for the moment, make people feel that you're really interested in THEM, not just another random website of someone looking for money... Create rich content, focus on one subject in your forums, don't try to be the next Yahoo, or CNN that have general topics, focus on ONE topic and people interested in that topic will find you in a way or another, whether by search engines or your posts in other forums...
Remember that we're in 2011, imagine in 2020 what your forum will become and how many members you will get, and how many ads you will put on (and $$$$ you will get)
You may spend 3 years of your life just building traffic (not trashy traffic) but targetted traffic, people who are interested in what you're doing, ask one of your closer friends to help you if you need.
Discuss with other people who own big forums and NEVER say "oh that didn't work I'm gonna try something else", who said that it didn't work??
no dont close the forum. keep on going with it. add unique content regularly.
i assure you that you will get good members soon.
try to have your forum url at ur signature in every forum u post
Although I have been posting new content daily and getting lots of backlinks, I'll try it again.
But the thing is that I have been doing nothing but advertising. I have a YT video up about the subject with 30.000 views and not 1 person has registered from there. Maybe 1 or 2 but no posts. I am getting an average of 9 unique views a day with all this. I have a Twitter account, FB account, YT account, etc and link my forum on other websites of the subject.
I do not know what to do anymore. It's also a subject where there are 2 large forums of and most people stay at that forum and don't join another one.