How to grow a community site

Of buyers and sellers

[wojo]

hi guys,
I have had this site for couple of years now, it mainly focuses on allowing private parties to sell/buy/trade computer hardware components. It's free to use the site and all of its features once you register. Here are couple of facts: ~2000 registered members, ~500 unique daily visitors. Overally i think the site has got a potential but it needs a word out.

My question is to your experts is how would you go about growing such site, what would you change about it to make it better, more attractive.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[rogerd]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, wojo. By many standards, your community is off to a solid start. You have a couple of ways to keep growing your community:
- attract new members
- be sure you are retaining existing members

If your site is visible in search engines, and is linked to by other sites, you should be getting an influx of visitors. Be sure they can easily understand what your site is about, and encourage them to register.

Retaining existing members is more about your community style and moderation - keep things friendly, and be sure discussion doesn't stagnate. In the long run, retaining your existing people is more important - if you don't do that, you'll be constantly treading water searching for new members.