Hi,
My forum is practically based around people sharing downloads, uploading and downloading attachments.
I have plenty of people downloading from my forum, but not many people uploading or having discussions about what they have downloaded.
(Most people have 0 post count but have downloaded multiple times)
My question to you is, how can I induce people to upload or chat more on the forum?
Thank you
Require posts to download.
I have a similar board - I have uploads and downloads of sims items. I also have problems getting members to post, but I don't want to introduce a post to download structure as that just causes LQP's (in my opinion).
Re the problems getting people to upload. I am assuming that if you have files/images that there is a maximum size or a preferred format (zip, rar etc) and that is a restriction people do not like. I also see that users do not want to be moderated as to what can or cannot be uploaded. I offer some extras for my uploaders - daily stats on downloaded items, that sort of thing, but really, they can open a blog and offer downloads from there.
What is making your site a better place to upload?
On downloads - you need to encourage comments, and awards /trophies are popular incentives to post where the user gets extra for posting rather than just getting the files after making X posts.
(2012-07-04, 12:11 AM)Paul H. Wrote: [ -> ]Require posts to download.
That will only bring you spam post. That will be even worse, wasting your time with a bunch of spam.
What about selling attachments with points? Using Newpoints of courser, similar to posts to download, but you configure the minimum characters by post, sections that give more/less/non of points, etc..
This is a tuff thing, in my case on one of my sites I have hundreds of users registering and never leaving a comment because they have to register to download attachments (game saves). Since the majority of them are not really "Forum" people.. they don't comment.
My best suggestion, which I'm trying to do myself, is to increase the growth of your "Forum" type people in your membership. When you have those special people that love chatting about whatever to whoever on a forum, you'll get more comments. But don't try to pull that out of people who aren't like that.. like requiring posts to download, cuz it's libel to bite you in the butt and give your site a bad rep.
Instead.. just find the right people.. make it an enjoyable home for them... and you'll have tons of comments.
Maybe kind of approach it as if caring for your favorite animals, fish, or plants... nurture them with the right circumstances.. and they'll likely multiple with love for you.. their master. lol
Hi guys thank you for your responses.
Ive tried the "reply before download" method before on a different forum and as mentioned I do get alot of people saying "I will try this", "thanks" and the occasions "asjdhasidhaisd".
Ive also tried the "You require 1 post before you can download" approach which is slightly better than above but im not sure if it still the right path to go down.
For the new-points idea, its actually not a bad one, but the majority of my users aren't going to be the type of people who will want to earn points before they can download.
The attachments that will be shared on this forum are mostly PDFs.
I have had a plugin made (by Yaldaram) that only allows people to download X amount of attachments before they have to upgrade to a VIP account but I only plan to use this when my forum is popular enough and when I start to monetize. Until then, what do you think about a token system, you have to upload to download? So for each attachment you upload, you gain a token etc. And perhaps start new users with 3 tokens.
The tokens systems sounds good. What kind of data are your users downloading/uploading?
Newpoints works great here. Set downloads at like 20 points a download, and each post at about 1 point or half a point if it's short.
IMO that's what I've seen work.
(2012-07-05, 07:02 PM)Omar G. Wrote: [ -> ]The tokens systems sounds good. What kind of data are your users downloading/uploading?
Thank you
My forum is for racing setups, so this involves PDF forms etc.
Its a really small niche but from what I can tell there's nobody out there that actually lets people upload their own setups. Because its such a small niche I don't want to do something wrong on push users away.