Create contests and giveaways!

I think this is by far the easiest way to attract many members to your forums, but you have got to be careful how you go about doing it - otherwise you will get slammed with a bunch of new members, and then when the contest is over, 95% of them will leave. Nevertheless, it still remains the best direct way in my opinion. Obviously, this is easier to do when you have money to spend. You can either give direct cash prizes, or you can perhaps buy items (ie: cd's off amazon) and then ship them to the winners. If you don't have money to spend, consider giving the members special features at the forums...such as a username effect or access to some top-secret forum.

Most important of all, do something unique that is surely going to convince members that they should go to your forums and no other. If you've got personal experience running contests and what not, post em up here.

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well if your offering hosting, then addition space and add-ons is always a good prize to give away.

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Definitely, and on an AdminFusion note...I plan on expanding the packages in the future...because I do realize that these packages are just plain unrealistic for some members (too small)...but hey, ya gotta start somewhere

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Yea I would agree contests are good but you need content for your new members to read and be interested in so they can stay around.

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Yes, contests are great way to kick-off your forums. ewebtalk.com recently had a 1 year anniversary contest with the first place prize being an iPod. They got about 350 new registrations and thousands of more posts. Considering it took them a year to get just 150 members, their contest worked quite well.

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haha Blotch, I bet they were happy wehen they saw the results. I never though of having a contest like that. Probably worth it though.

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Yea I'm sure they were happy when they saw the results. It was quite a good contest idea too: iPods are the popular thing these days. A lot of people have one, and those that don't want one. When someone sees an opportunity to recieve a free ipod (not one of those "complete some offers which cost money to get an ipod" websites), they will do whatever it takes - including post on a forum. Then they'll come back and make the forum active when they see that it's a valuable resource.

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AdvertiseTalk Forums - Learn how to promote, advertise, and earn revenue with your forum or website!

Devious plan [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/hsugh.gif[/img]

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kool i might have to try something like this ;D

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http://www.hiphoptakeover.com

I keep seeing that offering contests is the way to go for getting new members.

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