Trying to get website visibility

December 19, 2005 8:54 AM

I'm trying to get a new phpBB forum going, and I can't figure out how to begin getting word out. I have a few questions.

Short story is I just started a phpBB forum dedicated to e-commerce, the forum itself being non-commercial with no ads, banners, or shilling. Some e-commerce forums do exist out there but they hang on the coattails of larger forums. Having run several large phpBB boards for years and being deeply in e-commerce myself, I think the prospects for my forum are quite good. My goals are later to bring in some ad revenue, but my immediate interest is in running a good quality forum.

The problem is I "built it", but no one can see it. It's in Google now but since e-commerce and similar phraseology is spammed all to hell, I don't have a chance of getting a decent page rank.

I don't think I can go to the other forums and 'advertise' there, as that would be in bad taste. Besides, I want to build up my users from scratch rather than try to get people to defect.

So the main things I'd like to know are:

1. How long does it take to get added in directories such as Yahoo, dmoz, and Google? In your experience; not what they claim. I've had bad luck in past years submitting other [worthy] sites to them; Yahoo takes forever and dmoz says they'll get around to it when an editor looks at it (which is sometimes never).

2. Are there other directories I should look at?

3. What are some good (current and active) webrings I should start with?

And a more philosophical question:

4. What are the issues of perhaps scrapping the forum and going to a blog? Is it easier to get indexed and seen this way? Certainly I know that MeFi links to lots of blogs; almost never does a forum get FPPd.

Any other suggestions are appreciated from people who have worked through a similar situation.

posted by chef_boyardee to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Why not join some other forums that discuss this topic and start your own blog. As you earn respect in the community, some of the other members might be interested in checking out your blog and word will spread from there. Maybe once word spreads and you have a lot of visitors/commenter's you can then add a forum to your blog for visitors to discuss stuff.

Some people might disagree, but I think it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to start a community from scratch nowadays and have it gain a substantial amount of momentum.
posted by necessitas at 9:11 AM on December 19, 2005

1. Google: a couple weeks to a month, tops. To be honest, that's the only one I've ever checked until now, but I can say that Yahoo has indexed my 11-month-old site as of right now.

2. I don't think so, unless there's one specific one for e-commerce websites. Do you personally use other directories to find sites?

3. Maybe it's just me, but I didn't even know webrings were still popular. I think you'd be better off trying to get a regular ol' link from existing website.

4. Well, you need a way to attract visitors that isn't based on the community of users because, well, there isn't one yet. (On preview, what necessitas said.) I recommend keeping a blog in addition to hosting the forum.
posted by danb at 9:12 AM on December 19, 2005

Response by poster: danb -- Interesting idea... it never occurred to me the forum and blog have to be mutually exclusive. The blog might make a good magnet if the topics are interesting enough.
posted by chef_boyardee at 9:28 AM on December 19, 2005

In my own experience, a forum really only thrives if there was a bunch of people who wanted to talk about something, and nowhere else to talk about it, before the forum started up. "Build it and they will come" does not work well with forums.

I'm not sure I know what your goals are, though, to suggest alternative approaches. What's your mission (or business plan)?
posted by mendel at 10:28 AM on December 19, 2005

Google Textads will bring people to your site. The content will keep them there. I can't think of a better way of getting people who are interested in e-commerce to come to your site than to advertise cheaply.

Advertise your site as a "beta" site. It's slightly dishonest, but people are more likely to come and then stay if they think they're on the bottom rung of something that is going to grow and change. It'll be less of a stress on people too when you finally move to a revenue generating model.

Run a blog if you're interested in talking at people; run a BB if you want to talk with people. There are half way houses between pure BB software and pure Blog software. PostNuke and its ilk will give you a bit of both worlds.

In terms of future revenue, the blog format is probably the better. You want your site to be sticky, but you don't want it to be so sticky that people don't click into anything else.
posted by seanyboy at 11:41 AM on December 19, 2005

Finally, When you've got your site up and running, tell us where it is in metafilter-projects so we can all come over and ask questions without actually contributing anything to the site.
posted by seanyboy at 11:46 AM on December 19, 2005

Here's a list of forum directories... don't know how effective that will be, but it's a start.
And if anyone feels like registering for that forum, use this link and I might get some pocket change.
posted by Soliloquy at 12:00 PM on December 19, 2005

We've had a blog/forums combination running for years, and it works well. The blog brings in the visitors and the forums keep them. Longterm, trusted forumers are allowed to contribute to the blog.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 12:51 PM on December 19, 2005