New Site, Launch & Accelerating

Stuck

[David_T]

We lanuched a new website for Webmasters. It started well, we got 70 sign ups in the first couple of days, some of these initial members have remained active until today, some haven't. The problem we are facing is that there are almost no new signups. Some of you suggested link exchange but I think we cannot do that. If I understand well, this would require us to put 100 links on our page if we want to get 100 sites link back to us. I can't imagine our page be full of links because the site is kinda professional.

What would you suggest to do at this point? Buy 100000 emails to be sent out? I am not sure if that will work because you never know for those emails. Should we email webmasters and ask them to put our banner on their site (not for free, of course)? Any other idea except adsense?

[Bonusbana]

You might considering buying links and/or featuring contests, articles, etc etc to make other sites link to you because they want to - not just because you want to.

[David_T]

Buying links, where?

[grandpa]

You know, if you have the budget to buy links, you might want to consider going to the World of Search Conference instead. You might meet more than a few webmasters who can help you get un-stucked.

Maybe you can get reciprocal links with sites that appeal to your membership. They are webmasters, so, links to standards pages, scripts, and so on. They don't all have to be reciprocal either, IMO.

I can't imagine our page be full of links because the site is kinda professional.
Build a professional looking links page.

[mincklerstraat]

I can't imagine our page be full of links because the site is kinda professional

Take your time with it, write feature articles every once in a while about other sites, or resources on other sites, that your users could really use. Many will appreciate this and link back to you, or do a writeup on you or one of your resources.

Also, re. 'signups' - parts of your site that aren't a forum board probably shouldn't be part of the bit that does signups. I.e., your content should be available to everyone and there usually isn't much of a point in allowing people to sign up, unless it's to add comments or whatnot. If so, there's the cache factor, which is important for 'fast fast fast' page rendering - you have to be really tricky with your cache management to accomodate something that caches for non-registered users, and doesn't cache for registered users.