One of the most important components of a successful forum -- most especially if you are looking for monetization of the site -- is your membership base. The more members, the more thread and discussions are made and of course, the more potential money. But it is quite hard to convince people to join -- not unless you are offering something that could catch people's attention. We are talking here of offering incentives for people to join as members. Are you in favor of giving away incentives?
Do you mean incentives to join as a regular free forum member or incentives for premium forum memberships? As for free members, you can use a variety of tactics to lure visitors into joining. For one thing, just the opportunity to share an opinion on a hot topic will convince most people to sign up, if only to share their 'two cents' worth. For free or paid memberships to a forum, incentives are a good idea. I've used free ebooks in the past to get many people to sign up for my email newsletters. You might try picking out a specific ebook and offering it on your forum home page for new members and an ebook package for paid members. That could increase both member bases easily. Just be sure to display a large ebook graphic so that everyone knows what's available. You could offer a 'members only free or paid area' (not available to guests) containing various free ebooks/templates/web graphics for members to enjoy. The allure of free digital stuff can be very enticing.
I give out free t-shirts when people reach 10 posts. I have that advertised on the forum to try to get people to register and then hit their 10 quality posts to receive their t-shirts. I get the t's from another party @ 1.5/shirt so doesn't cost much to get people excited.
Wow very nice, but you shouldn't rely on it, could just be use a promotion while your forum is still small, or any other method that requires payment to get people to join.
I usually run posting contests with money prizes as an incentive on my community, but not for joining. I usually do this when I see my community's activity going down and some things need to be freshen up. I really believe your content is the most incentive for members joining because if the content isn't good, how do you expect to attract new members or even retain members?
I have run some fun contests recently and the thread gets viewed tremendously, but only a few participate. I just don't get how people don't want free stuff? I probably won't bother with this again.
Well, we have a subscription package which gives them access to stuff. Lifetime is 20 dollars and people seem to have no problem paying that. We have like 1000+ lifetime members. We have a lot of good stuff in there and people join sometimes just for the stuff in there. But thats like a paid thing. If you mean something not paid then I would suggest contests and what not. Posting contests are always good. But, the problem is that you really should be giving away something nice you already own that way you do not come out of pocket. Sites start to be hard to maintain when they become moneypits. Its just your prefernece I guess. But , maybe you were giving the wrong stuff away if they didnt want it. I sometimes see sites giving away things that have nothing to do with their niche. That really is a bad idea...
Yes we offer a incentive for our members to join the forum, one of them is so they become a member of our freeroll league, so they can win free money playing poker in our freerolls.
I offer people an incentive to join in the form of things like downloads, arcade games, etc that aren't useable by non members. Seems to be pretty popular. I also unofficially offer people I talk to online an incentive to join by simply offering something nearly every one of them wants (like content for their site or their fan games or whatever) and then say they have to join to get it.
I don't offer any incentives at the moment, except for the opportunity to join in the discussion, but I'm certainly not against them. If I could find the winning combination of something relatively cheap to give away, whilst still being fairly attractive to potential users, I'd jump on the chance. I have previously ran a few game servers, which did get players, but didn't really convert in to members. I really like this idea and it's something I might look in to. Where did you manage to get t-shirts so cheap if you don't mind me asking? Also, what kind of quantity is required to get such a cheap price.
I agree with you on this one sir. Content really is the key to getting a lot of members for your forum. If you have crappy content, then how will you manage to keep those posts coming in? Some people are really picky when it comes to posting. They only post on some topics which they deem worthy of posting and if you topics are filled with crappy content, you will end up with crappy replies too which will ultimately hurt your site.
