Hello everyone,

I just started a forum and need some help getting it off the ground. What is the best way to promote a forum?

Steve

You can submit to the many forum directories out there. Just google "forum directory". ANd if you got the money start an adwords campaign.

Thank You

Forums are one of the hardest things to get going, For a number of reasons. Firstly unlike a site you are going to need your visitors to do something, i.e join and post, and unless they join and post you aren't going to build content, and without content they wont vitsit.

If i'm honest i will say your forum will fail, But only because most do.
There has to be a reason why people should join and start posting, so unless you can think of that reason there is little chance people will hang around.

For a start you have way too many forums, and most are completely empty. Why would someone join an empty forum? Delete about 2/3 of your forums and make the remaining forums more general. By moving threads into the fewer forums you can make your forum instantly look more active and less empty.
Do you really need four contest forums at the moment? Delete 3 and make one "Contest Forum" which hosts all contest threads.

Same with the reviews forums.

share add revenue with users ... that always work ...

I dont think sharing revenue with users helps. Bcuz I didnt join webmaster-talk or any other forum bcuz I'll be getting some small income from it. I joined bcuz its worth being here. I think its worth spending the time to join here cuz the forum is really good and active. I suggest that you get some ghostwriters to write quality posts for u. Ask your friends to be active.

And, if u arent successful with the above attempts, post urself with multiple user names,lol. Its not right. But, getting momentum in a forum is so tough that it is difficult to make it like an angel. Crazy opinion , isnt it ?.

I agree with STOX.

Get rid of 2/3 of your topics. Once there are enough members and you feel like you need more topics, creat them, and move the posts to their new relavent topic.

You can offer $0.10, $0.20 per post to get your forums going.

Adding it to the directories won't bring much traffic to your site.However it will build backlinks for you and give a higher pagerank.