In our 4 years ScubaBoard has rarely done any direct advertising (ppcs, banners, magazine ads), however, we do a lot of indirect promotion using stickers, tshirts, banners at events and anything else that will build word of mouth. This has worked well enough and brought us to about 1,000,000 posts. Still, the bigger you get the more you seem to do to keep the growth rate increasing. Word of mouth, inbound links and search engine links keep us growing nicely but we have begun (or I should say, re-activated) some ppc and print ad campaigns. Right now we are spending a few dollars here and there for ppc terms but it's very specific stuff and not really high bidding. The goal os any campaign for a community should be to target those people who will join and participate as best possible. For example, if you run a forum like DaniWeb's which covers hosting advertising for the term "web hosting" would probably not be an ideal use of money, especially if you compete for a top spot. The more specific the term and the more informative your ad is, the more likely you will be to attract people who want a forum. Remember, the goal is quality... quantity means nothing if you have a 0.01% sign up rate (unless the advertising is dirt cheap). Don't forget to count stickers, shirts, cds or anything else you can use to brand your name as part of your advertising campaign. Many sites forget the power of word of mouth yet word of mouth is what makes most sites what they are. The more you can feed off of what you have the better your campaign will be -- it is always easier to have your users help promote you (even if they don't realize it) than try to "cold call" new users.

Not at all. My site makes $0 so the likelihood of me forking over cash to advertise isn't going to happen.

Sure advertising it gets it's noticed more but if you don't sell anything on your site at what point do you stop spending money on it for no $$ based returns?

Just wanted to add TedS you're my hero! I love your modern insider site

While I previously mentioned I'm a relatively big PPC spender, I have never invested a cent in advertising out of pocket. Once I began to notice the forums growing, I, just like many other forum admins, put up AdSense and started earning a bit of revenue. Since then, I started investing a portion of revenue into AdWords.

That makes sense. I have ad sense up but its well lets just say it's not so good.

Also I'm not sure but I think I'm technically not allowed to make money of my site. It's a fan site that is given "exclusive" things for it by the official site, that the official site doesn't show, but part of that agreement is it has to be non commercial.

nathanaus - You're right, there is a big differance betweeen a for profit business that happens to be a website and a fan site or not-for-profit site. If you aren't making money you probably don't want to spend much if anything, but at the same time people may be more likely to link to you for free given the non-profit nature of the site.

I hadn't thought of that. The difficulty there is finding a site with the right potential target audience. It's one thing to have link everywhere, its another to have value links that attract visitors.

I would, and have advertised my forum (including on DaniWeb ), and it has definately been worth it. I believe any serious board should consider advertising.

As csc gal said, I came out the pockets once and made it right back selling ads. I also reinvest a portion of my revenue into ppc (adwords) and banner/textlinks. I'm thinking about do something as TedS as far as promotion. Being I do stay in Daytona Beach. I think it would be great.

Hi I'm new here.
I'm sure I already posted this, but can't find it!
I have small not-for-profit site with a mssageboard too adn whave got it lsited in search engines, but was wanting to push it further by paying to advertise. This is because some of the content is not on any other websites and I wanna b the first to have it etc!
so what's adwords like? Expensive?
Anyone know of any other free ways to improve traffic?
x

If I am not mistaken adwords can get pretty expensive, I advise starting out something a little smaller scale, like advertising on a local site, all depending on what kind of site your site is.