Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi,

I`m in the midst of launching a new fitness related forum (there is an obesity epidemic you know) and am looking for advice on how to reach interested people and generate some active new members.

Hmm, I`m not sure on linking, so I won`t... but the site is fitness-i.com in the event you need to see it or want to critique it in order to offer advice.  I do have a reaonable amount of experience in this industry -- but from the point of view of managing an already popular site.

I have seen lots of "paid posting" style offers and I`m really hesitant to fill the site up with garbage content from people that don`t really have an insight into the training world.

Currently I`m trying to advertise via Adwords but perhaps I`m just having trouble thinking of ways to capture the interest of people with the right mindset.  Any advice or pointers to online resources would be great.  I`m also interested in seed funding but that would belong in another location.

You might want to contact sites that deal with your industry but dont offer a community to discuss it. Offer your site as a solution.

Hi Todd, Paula,

Thanks for your responses!

The answer to both your questions is quite similar.  There is no "attached" web site with the forum.  In this industry many forums are really just a way to get eyeballs together for a company to market services or supplements to the readership -- or to those that happen by due to web searches.

I`m really aiming to avoid that relationship as it soon leads to moderating and censoring of views that could be negative towards the sponsor.  The alternative is to lose the sponsorship and the common revenue model.  Indirect sponsorship through affiliate links or other forms of advertising are certainly acceptable revenue streams.

So, from my point of view, what I need to do is start to get people looking for answers to sign up and ask questions on the forums.  I do already have a core set of people that can provide a lot of helpful information and/or support in response.

It looks like you have a real good start of an online forum.

Hey there.  As a once (2 years ago) semi-pro body builder I started a forum which I will not name here as the domain is currently being renewed. However, I found it wasn’t hard at all to get my site out there and interested posters, posting relevant content.

What I would first suggest doing is getting your site optimized for search engines. What type of forum are you using? 

Also, I would personally create about 100-200 accounts for yourself on the forum and posting topics and replying to them from other names.  If your forum looks dull and there are no posts, why would anyone sign up to your site and post when they can go to bodybuilding.com where there are millions of posts?

You also need to build link relevancy to your website.  This is getting people with similar sites to exchange web links with you.

Let me know if you need any more help.

Gerald

Hey folks, thanks for the great advice!