Struggling to get my site off the ground

[IIN Operator]

I've been struggling since the start to get my site off the ground. Everything I've tried to get it running has failed to bring in traffic. To help you understand my situation, I'll comment on the target topic for my site.

While I'd like to compete long-term with the big sites, in the short term I'm trying to develop a website on sports and pro wrestling. I'll cover how I've addressed the problem thus far.

I initially intended to use a temporary forum (with an outdated free release of forum software) while I developed the forum software and site content. I figured I could get discussions going on my target topics meanwhile. As the forum was failing to develop activity, I decided to make a computer game. While discussion grew initially for the game, people came in solely for the game and didn't even post anything elsewhere on the forum.

So when I realized that wasn't working, I decided to drop that. I decided that I couldn't just run 1 big forum and instead I had to diversify, so I started a wrestling website, complete with in-depth columns that I was writing every other day, but despite my best efforts posting on wrestling-related websites, no traffic ever came to the site or its Wrestling Wiki underneath it.

So I stopped that and went through a few more failures, then went back to the game, this time on a specialized forum. Of course, that didn't work and I was left with a failing site.

So recently, I brought the wrestling website back, this time with a forum. It flopped as I had no time to devote to it at all, so I changed my homepage to request outside help (its current state and it is the only page of the site). I'm definitely going to need outside help for things such as forum management and the frequent content updating tasks.

What I'm trying to ask is, how am I going to turn this thing around? I've got a wrestling column that happens to be posted on a large wrestling website. I've got at least 1 project I'm currently working on for my website (though it is static and probably not of huge value for promotional purposes). I just need to figure out how to utilize the resources I currently have to give my website and that's the problem I've got.

[jaint]

I run a few sites, one of which gets little to no traffic - it's essentially my sandbox. I haven't advertised it and as yet it's still not completed, I'm still designing it. Another site I have is a site/forum, and the site gets about 20-50 users a day {anonymous users}. Those users generally don't really interact with the site, and are there purely for the content/read etc. While on the forum for the site, I have built a nice community and there are regulars that stop in everyday to post and discuss and it's a more small community - that's kept this way so that everyone feels comfortable. Another site that I run gets about 3k of traffic, and this site is just crazy - it takes much of my free {computer} time to deal with and manage.

So my main point, is that the site that gets 3k of traffic is on a topic that I'm interested in and care about! It's not just some random topic that I chose, nor a topic that I think that will get traffic. It's on a topic that I find interesting, and thus I'm more then willing to devote time to and thus learn and share info on. If you really don't care about a topic, and only care about getting the traffic or making money - your site or company will go nowhere. In order to become big, you have to care and like what your doing.

That's my first point, but the second step is to stick with it - don't quit just because it seems like a failure. The community site that I mentioned above, started off very tiny - getting something like 1 visitor a
day, then I kept adding to it and all the while maintaining it and ensuring that I liked the content and overall product. As time grew on, people shared the address and people seemed to like it - I made sure that I had my own guidelines as to how the site developed (hold back on ads, hold back on adminstering strict rules on your forum or on comments).

Dedicate time to your site, even if it gets no traffic - keep writing articles or content for your site. Make it a community, add a forum and get users interested - clearly they came to your site for a reason (they were interested in the topic), so give them something to talk about or debate about or read. Offer something for free, maybe a free ebook, or maybe some sort of service. Don't over use technology, keep away from copying other sites - don't use animated gifs, and fancy javascripts. Ask other people to link to you, if your site is commercial - try paying for advertising.

Join a banner exchange site and see if that helps.

[fattony]

Also try putting your site in a popular search engine such as Google. Then find some friends, and make sure they link to your site. By some I mean about 20. In return link to their site. This will allow now only users from their site to get to yours but backlinking. Backlinking is the foundation of Google. Basically what it means is that if a website has many link pointing at it (that is linking to it) it will be rated higher among its peers when the Google crawler software find it. Dont be afraid link to your page in your face book, myspace, or AIM accounts as this will help also. An example of this working is our very own x10hosting. They require a text link from all of their sub-domains that link back to their page, thus giving their page more weight. Also some search engines value websites submitted higher than websites the crawler software finds. An example of this is Ask.com.

If you want to exchange links with my page Im all up for that, although I am currently in the process of completely changing it. If you have any more questions or want to link, PM me.

[Mashy]

For a forum, don't just create it and expect people to join - create it, then you and a few friends go on and post like mad about whatever your forum is about. You might want to have four or five accounts each - people won't know unless you're really obvious about it.
Try to get as many of your friends on, and give them something to talk about - otherwise people will just go to forums they're already a member of.

That's the basic start to making a successful forum, from the actual posting aspect of it. Obviously there is a whole load of other things you can do which will help it, but the main thing is to get a solid community down, and build on it. Also, don't have everything complete straight away - give people a little something to look forward to. Obviously make sure there's enough substance to keep people, though.
And this won't work immediately - it will take months, maybe even years to get recognition, and even if it has over 100000 members it may never be considered 'popular'.

[agaitu]

try to make your web search engine freindly and add them in search engines
and tell about your web or forum to many people i.e chat freinds,freinds,
try to comment in do follow blogs

[frankfriend]

TRy a non forum site, get some 'interesting' topics that people follow. You have to have something that pulls people to your site, and a forum is` rarely enough on its own.

You ahve to put in time, go to other sites and get mutual links, go to other forums and mention yours in the course of other posts