The Viewty Project - The Take Off is Hard
My internet connection is still down, and it’s getting really annoying. Anyway, I grabbed dinner at Burger King today, and happily they got free wireless internet, which I of course will use to it fullest.
I thought it was on time I updated you guys on my little Viewty Forum project. Thing is, I haven’t done much with the site yet. I just don’t got time, but I have done something.
It’s not easy
One thing is for sure, it’s not easy to start a niche forum/site. Where to advertise it? There aren’t that many sites that I know for a fact got users with a LG KU990 Viewty mobile phone. And since my site/forum only attracts these people I got an advertising issue. So far I have used about $20 on PPC, and got around 60+ clicks for it. Which no one converted to members.
I think I started with PPC way to fast, since the forum almost don’t have any members, or content. So, lesson number 1; Have something to give your readers before spending your advertising money.
Make SEO-friendly sub-pages.
I have started to make some sub-pages outside the forum, the thought is to get these as SEO-friendly as possible. I’m applying standard SEO rules to archive this. The ones I have made so far are:
http://www.viewtyforum.com
http://www.viewtyforum.com/download-lg-ku990-viewty-games.php
Adding games each day
My tactic is to keep adding games to the forum, and the sub-page each day to get visitors come back, and check if there are some new games. I haven’t had time to do this yet, but hopefully I will.
How to get people as members
What is the best way to get people becoming an member on a forum? Now they only have to register if they want to post topics, or answer on some. I’m also thinking on making it so they have to be a member to read the topics as well, what do you think about that? Will that scare more members away, then making them register?
Getting some search traffic
I haven’t posted the link to viewtyforum on any other sites then this blog, but already it gets some small amount of search traffic. Yesterday the site reach a peak of 27 visits from google. Not bad considering I haven’t started on the link building.
If the amount of visits from the search engines keep going this way, I will be a happy champ. 
The quality is quite good as well;
Pages/Visit: 3.97
Bounce Rate: 27.66%
Thats where I am today, the forum have actually got 5 members, where two of them have written something. what I have to do now is;
- Start building up some links
- Make a couple more SEO-friendly pages.
- Make more topics in the forum
Comments?
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If you give away something to people who sign up you should see an increase in members.
For example I have an forum about selling ebooks, and I give away a free eBook of the members choice when they sign up and post in a specific area of the blog what ebook they want.
It’s still pretty slow growth to start with this method, but eventually it snowballs…
That’s just my idea, I am not sure what you could give away as an incentive for signing up for your forum
Maybe give away a credit to a online ringtone store or something. Don’t know if you can do that, but that is less money, but still the same effect.
But honestly, getting anything off the ground is hard, and with anything once it is popular the money will roll in. I still think that your site is a bit to niche specific as this technology will go out and then the forum will loose a lot of traffic to the next big thing (I assume phone nuts keep up to date).
But if you can stick it out you should get some return on your investment eventually (even if it is flipping the forum in its decline for a bit of cash…)
I’m sure what would be appropriate for your forum to give away. It needs to be something that doesn’t cost you anything to give away.
I don’t know much about Viewty or it’s users. My first thought was that you could join one of those “free electronics” sites like Xpango, and then write a quick report to give away that shows how to get free stuff from these sites.