my forum is way too quiet

what is your site about?

Generally speaking i try to do all server moves during the time when the site is least active(usually at midnight) to lessen the annoyance of members.

 

My forum is about fish / aquariums / aquatic life. I have never seen an aquarium-related forum that is lacking members. There's tons of them out there with 100,000, 200,000 or more members. This is why I wasn't worried about starting one myself - I knew the audience was out there.

My board is called Aquatic Forums. It won't let me post a link here because I'm a new Admin Addict member, so I'll PM it to you.

What do you recommend I do to recruit more members? Most of the people that are already on the forum came from a very popular fish forum known as Aquarium Advice. Word of mouth got around and now I have about 10 solid members that are always there - until I did the server change. They're still there, but not nearly as active.

My forum is actually most active at night - 8:00 PM to about 1:00 AM, so I did the server switch during the daytime hours when most of my members were probably at work.

 

This may sound dirty and is probably extremely dirty but works.
Goto the larger sites and steal their members this way you have more members contributing, after that your site should go up and users will start to find you via google. Also, add more general forums to expand on the fish discussion, thus users feel more inclined to discuss other topics around the forum, a little change of pace.
Make your site slick and easy to navigate and users will come easy, but always remember, dump countless time into your forum.

 

How do you suggest I "steal their members"?

 

You can private message a few of their users, basically telling them about your own website and how awesome it is.
Ask for their help ext.

 

create a page on facebook, advertising your site, be sure to post updates & get your current members to like it & share it on facebook, hopefully word can then spread, also post pictures to public in your group ensuring you have the web url on them, people see pics & then go, hey I'll check out their url..

just a suggestion

 

that is so tacky and something that newb forum owners do.


please don't follow this directions because it makes you look desperate.

 

You are calling me a noob web-owner but I guarantee my site is bigger and more high quality then yours.
The fact is that it works.
Face the facts. If you can't do this and you feel that its "tacky" then thats your problem.