Getting Traffic to an Untech-savvy Niche Forum

I'm trying to get traffic to my Swimming Forums, problem is, swimmers don't usually hang around the sites that I'm used to advertising on.

Swimmers don't really browse other forums, so I can't use my usual signature-link methods.

Right now, I am advertising at Yahoo! Answers, and while I am getting traffic, it's very slow.

I am considering investing in PPC, but I don't know how well that's going to work.

So how can I traffic to my swimming forum? I want to run a contest to boost traffic - but I need some traffic to start that up first!

 

It does sometimes get tricky when you're dealing with a niche that isn't web-related. In such a scenario, there are plenty of alternative advertising/promotion opportunities. Yahoo Answers is a good start. Other ideas would be to perhaps check out some swimming blogs, galleries, swim-gear shops/stores, etc. and see if you can affiliate with them, either by link/banner exchange, guest posting, or whatever they're up for. For example, you could write an article for a swimming blog and include a byline with a link to your forum.
A PPC campaign might not be a bad idea, considering the amount of swimming sites that are out there. :shrug:

Thread moved to Monetization and Management.

 

Thanks for the info Nick

I've actually already paired up with an article/blog site SwimCoachTools - they use our forums to discuss some of their articles and the owner is the most contributing with very useful and informative posts.

I have already affiliated with some stores, in terms of commissions, maybe I might ask some smaller stores if they want to use our forums to offer support (Would that be an interesting idea?)

Guest posting/link exchanges are tough cause I can't find that many swimming sites that are small sized like mine.

 

That does sound interesting, and if you can make it work, I say go for it!

Who said they have to be small? There are plenty of large commercial stores/sites that may be very willing to place your link on their site even though your forum is small. I had a sponsor that had a huge store in my niche, and for placing a small banner above the thread listing on my forum, they gave away a $10 gift card to their store on my forum on a monthly basis. My forum was/still-is very small and most likely didn't send much traffic their way and the owner knew it; he was just generous enough to sponsor my forum in exchange for essentially nothing.

You never know what you'll find without trying.

 

Very interesting. Maybe I will ask some stores (in addition to the vendor idea) if they want to sponsor some small contests

 

I totally forgot to mention the kicker in my post: the $10 gift card they gave away was on a monthly basis, making the deal that much sweeter. I've never come across such a generous sponsor before, but it proves that they're out there.

 

That's just luck :p

 

I think doing a search for swimming blogs and then commenting with your url will do you a lot of good.

 

I also run a non tech related site.

Be sure to create a Facebook page and a twitter account. When you get some particularly good content tweet it and share on facebook. Start by getting your non-swimming FB friends to join your FB page, they may know someone who might be interested when they see the update of ______ has joined ___________.

Those are free ways but also consider buying ads in programs for swimming meets. They shouldn't be that expensive.

Get a good looking T-Shirt or sweatshirt made with your site name and maybe logo to wear at swimming events. Make sure your URL is printed large enough that it can be seen by people from a fair distance.