Jump Starting a Forum - Ideas?
 

Other than the usual Pay $0.10/post or whatnot, anyone with any more ideas how to jumpstart a non-adult forum?

I am really dry, all I can think is get a few people with a few nicknames and have them post too for a flat rate.

People LOVE an active forum and it seems like a Catch-22 getting one going.

Have a contest for a t-shirt or some low end prize like that. It's amazing how many people will put on a dog and pony show for a simple t-shirt.

Yup, I myself have found that people will do much more for a case of beer than they will for $50

hire me and juicy to come and hang there :1orglaugh

Characters - just make sure you're very creative when using them even down to making different regular typos/grammatical errors. People wont post on a dead board. However, if it looks busy they will.

You should really ask a few people you know to post on your forum, creating fake characters when starting a board doesn't sound like a good idea in the long term.

What kind of forum are you starting ?

Surely you jest.

Buy advertising on GFY!

Brad

Do you have any traffic to the non-board area, usually if you got a decent amount of bookmarkers to where-ever and you open a forum they will sign up and interact. Might take a little time for the ball to get rolling but its inevitable. if you dont have a non-board area, may want to open one up, but contests are a great idea that usually work quite well also.

IMO - have someone there 24 hours a day.
All people who post on boards are "attention whores" and they like an immediate fix for that attention.
I don't know if I would go ten cents a post but ten cents for an immediate reply?

Contests, rewards and all that kind of thing is a good way to start.