Starting a new forum. Looking for advice

[gape]

Hello. I have been interested in starting a vbulletin message board for a very long time and finally I have it online. It's about 3 days old now, but there haven't really been any registrations. I realize that I can't expect a full active message board after 3 days. I have ads running, I get about 100 people per day, but they all seem to click on the ad, look at the main page, then leave, and that is very frusturating as its money down the drain.

This bulletin board is a general "talk about anything" board, I have plenty of different sections for people to post in, and I even allow guests to post on some of the forums. But they just do not post for whatever reason. I'm mainly looking for advice on how to promote the website, and how to get people to actually post once they come.

I have got 3 friends who are posting with me, we are trying to get people to join and post, but obviously we are doing something wrong. I even set up an arcade, which you need to register to play, and still nothing. Any advice/suggestions?

[I Will Make It]

then go around and Spam other forums to give yourself a anme

WHAT? what kind of smart idea is this? Spam other forums?
Who the /¤#& would register with your forum if you did it that way?

[igorberger]

Do not take me literary please.

You have to do it in authoritative style, not make it come out as Spam if you do you will die before your new forum dies....

So the buttom line you have to know the subject you going to talk about in your forum and other peoples forums, or you will be Spamming.

[prtt75]

Who said getting paid to post in forums would not work? You are completely wrong...

Just see how many website owners are doing this. [google.com...] ...

If you are starting a website especially a community site and you want it to be successful, you have to try everything to get the traffic. Instead of spending 10 cents per click on PPC Ads, why not pay 10 cents for every post and 50 cents for someone who can refer somebody to your forum? Viral marketing is the fastest way to promote anything on the web. Are you going to waste your time posting new topics and answering at the same time? And for how long are you prepared to do that?

I hope you'll agree that you should also be ready to spend not only time but also money if you want to be successful with anything you do online, unless of course, you already have 200,000 people in your list to start advertising with.