Promotions Not Working Posted March 20th, 2006 in Mailbag

I have a forum and I’ve been working hard marketing. I’ve done paid posting, done few advertising on other websites, and also google adwords.

Nothing seems to be working the way I want it to and I was wondering if you have any suggestions promoting this website because I think it was a big potential and could eventually monetize the site.

Thanks in advance and you’ve been a great inspiration to me.

Today I am answering another mailbag question from a reader of this blog. Traffic must come first and I think we all have a sense of that. Monetization can wait. I normally won’t even begin monetization of a site or forum until I have at least 500 unique visits coming in daily. Traffic and creating activity on your forum is going to be winning solution. I want to reference a recent post answering the question of how to get members as I feel it offers multiple solutions to grow your forum in the early stages without costing you a penny.

We all know that forum building is hard work. You must make certain decisions before ever even starting your forum like, “Am I willing to work hard long term to make this a success?” or “Is this a niche that needs another forum?” I think with hard work and creativity you can build a successful community. The particular community we are discussing here today has to do with college discussions. I would brainstorm and look for any way to reach college students through link exchanges, college chat rooms, hooking up with fraternities to promote the site through word-of-mouth, and so on. There is no doubt plenty of room for growth in the college sector. Best wishes.