proboards and internet search

[curtism1234]

Hello all, I have a question and hope you can help me out.

I run a proboards forum that is outdoor related. I've had this website a year and had an intial membership of about 50 members (these members followed me over to a new site after the owner of our prevouis private/VBul site up and killed it). In the last year we've only gained less than 10 members mainly from linking in other outdoor related forums as well as referals.
The site is small but very strong as it's got 11,000 posts in 1 year.

I have submitted the url to free internet submission sites --- and of course I really didn't expect anything.

My question, what is the best (cost effective) way to get traffic into this site? I don't have much money, but on the other hand I don't necisarily need a whole lot of growth. I just want to ensure that the site exists if something were to happen to 5 or so top members.
I have seen the search engine submission services that range from cheap to "oh my god !!!"
I have also looked into yahoo or google pay per click --- though it seems that will be a expensive option and also subject to click abuse.

What would you suggest for my proboard site???


thank you so much
curtis

 

[Arm_Pit]

Hello all, I have a question and hope you can help me out.

I run a proboards forum that is outdoor related. I've had this website a year and had an intial membership of about 50 members (these members followed me over to a new site after the owner of our prevouis private/VBul site up and killed it). In the last year we've only gained less than 10 members mainly from linking in other outdoor related forums as well as referals.
The site is small but very strong as it's got 11,000 posts in 1 year.

I have submitted the url to free internet submission sites --- and of course I really didn't expect anything.

My question, what is the best (cost effective) way to get traffic into this site? I don't have much money, but on the other hand I don't necisarily need a whole lot of growth. I just want to ensure that the site exists if something were to happen to 5 or so top members.
I have seen the search engine submission services that range from cheap to "oh my god !!!"
I have also looked into yahoo or google pay per click --- though it seems that will be a expensive option and also subject to click abuse.

What would you suggest for my proboard site???


thank you so much
curtis

Honestly what I would suggest is Purshacing a domain, and getting cheap ad free hosting for 4 or 5$ a month and setting up a PHPbb or a SMF Forum. In my experaince this will actually get more people to join, Not nessisaryily get people to the site, but get them to join, Because many people dont want to join a site filled with adds, ussaly quite slow, and the dreaded "proboards" that is disliked by many across the globe. I would personally suggest SMF, It is a very easy forum to setup and more secure then PHPbb with more fetuares.
There are converters avalible for most forums, although I'm not sure if there are any for probaords since there is no DB access.

 

[curtism1234]

Thanks for responding.

I did look into getting a domain of my own. And I agree 100% with you in that proboards is not the most desirable forum. The administration as well as members helped me look for a domain name that we could use. Unfortunatly we could not find a "good" one that was available and that we liked. I left it as "well we'll use proboards until we can find the right domain name".

On our old site, I was left in the dark in regards to the hosting aspect of the site. I know many hosting companies will submit to search engines, including google, yahoo, msn, etc. But what would be a reasonable result of the search engine? Would that generate some traffic with higher search positions or is this a marketing thing by the host that gets people to join?