Well it has been a good 8 months since my last community blog post. I thought I’d log in once again and submit one of my ‘loved’ blogs. I never have liked blogging really but I seem to get a lot of kudos writing for The Biggest Boards blog.

My website has been booming. I have been working hard, keeping my site up-to-date and keeping users flowing. Despite the economic downturn and internet sales decreasing,  our advertising sales and visitors to my site (according to Google Analytics) are up 78.89% compared to the same period last year. Yeah yeah, I’m bragging,  but I am happy. My website is slowly doing what I want it to do, which included grow consistently being able to support itself income-wise.

Here are a few tips that I have applied to my website I am sharing with you lucky users…

1. Keep users happy. If they suggest a feature. Go out of your way to test it out. You will find the user will be happy and support the new feature as much as possible and in this case keep new visitors flowing in. If someone wants something taken down, at least consider it. Do the research and take the time to make the best decisions for your site. But if you have a mixed choice of users wanting something and not wanting something, do a community vote. Majority rules and chances are, if a members leave because of the outcome, the users would have made trouble in the future as well.

2. Design makes a difference. I have been through a good 20 designs since I started my site. My users don’t mind, because in order to have a new design, there will be new features and users love new things. Its like giving a child a new toy. They can play with it for hours but they will get sick of it. That’s why sites change their look every 2-5 years and add sections. In my case Ive done this in 2-5 months. It depends on what you want and what your users are like.

3. Track your statistics and rivals. Statistics are important. I highly recommend installing and USING the statistics you receive with Google Analytics (or something similar that gives you neat graphs and detailed hot spot reports). This gives you a good indication of who is going where and what sections you need to improve content. A forum is hard work but keeping users is harder.

4. Do things for the community. Support such events as Red Nose Day or other related or local events. Get your members to contribute and have fun doing it. Users, no matter if they are arrogant, or the nicest people on earth, cant say no to a donation to a good cause, helping out a community foundation is also good publicity and it really makes a difference to a child, a family, a country or the world.

5. Contact a local newspaper or magazine. This will be your first shot of fame! Websites are popular these days and an easy way to get publicity and fame. A local newspaper is a good start. They LOOK for content and you are basically dangling it in their face if you contact a local media source. Once you in the local paper you can move up to bigger and better things by having this media reference.

6. Do the basics. Noticed I haven’t included the basics on how to market a forum? With 10,000+ articles on how to promote your forum, there’s no need for me to tell you to.. Make the layout of your forum attractive. Add some fresh contents, news articles, contests and introduce a referral program. The moderators should also start a new topics. Advertise on relevant forums by posting your site’s link on their web page and ask their members to review your website. Try link exchange with popular web hosting sites. Send e-mails to your existing members who are not posting regularly and inform them about the start of new threads. etc.. You should know that and if you don’t, do not start to use what I have described in previous points. Start with the basics, they work! Use Twitter (everyone does these days) and other social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook to promote and keep doing it!

7. Stay posted. The Biggest Boards, this blog, webmaster forums and rival forums will keep you updated on what you need to do to stay up to date. Its never fun having an old website that is not with the current times.

These are just my tips, for more visit the biggest boards forums and stick around here!

-James - http://www.broadcastingworld.net

• 6 Comments

Hello everyone!Starting today we are running a post competition over the next 30 days. It starts today (Sunday, September 14th and ends at 12 midnight on Monday, October 13th. All you have to do is make as many posts as possible during that time period on the forum at http://www.thebiggestboards.com/forums/ .

Here are the rules:
1) There are 2 top prizes. The 2 people with the most posts during the time period will win the prizes shown below.
2) Your posts must be UNIQUE and ORIGINAL (not copied from another forum or another site). If you violate this rule, you will be disqualified.
3) Your posts must have substance and be somewhat informative. Posts like “welcome to the forum”, “thank you for this”, “good info”, etc… that don’t add anything of value to this forum will NOT be counted. Each post needs to be 10 words or more to be counted and we WILL be checking this for each post.
4) You can NOT reply to yourself or keep posting without anyone replying to your thread. There MUST be another post between your posts to count
5) The decisions of the TBB Admin and staff are final for determining if posts count or not.

First place will win $50
Second place will win $25
Payment will be made via Paypal

To enter this contest, just start posting today!

Please be sure to follow the rules so you don’t get disqualified.

We are excited to be doing our first post contest and have such great prizes to give out. We look forward to your participation at http://www.thebiggestboards.com/forums/

Yours in good health;
The Entire TBB Team!

• 3 Comments

Recently I have become acquainted with Danny Thornton. You may recognize the name since he is a prolific blogger. Over the past few months I have really enjoyed reading his stuff and getting to know him.

Danny blogs on many different topics including sports, real estate, blogging, and a wide variety of other topics. What first made me notice his blog posts was the fact that his articles were spread out over a wide range of sites that were networked together in many creative ways. Also he used Digg and many of the other available social networking avenues to spread the exposure of his work. His posts are widely read and he is making some nice money from all his efforts on the internet. Many people spend countless hours online, but only a small percentage actually profit from all the hours they put in. Danny is one of the people actually succeeding in the crowded “blogging world”. Read the rest of this entry »

• 1 Comment

Below is an article from Soundboy. He will be contributing regular articles to The Biggest Boards Blog. We encourage you to check out his website and check back often for new articles from Soundboy in the future!

Going “GREEN” and saving the environment is all the rage these days. It seems that everyone is jumping on the green bandwagon. So why have you not gotten into the action with your websites?

Hi I’m James, A.K.A Soundboy.  I am a guest writer to The Biggest Boards Blog and I’m here to tell you the best secrets, tips and freebies for webmasters and forum owners. Let’s get started.

There has been a lot of debate and ongoing scientific research about how to save the planet and get things back on ecological track.  Most companies, businesses, and products are going green. But what about webmasters?

It seems to be the trend for webmasters to use the “green” mantra to proclaim their support of this movement AND it seems to attract a lot of users. But many website owners ask themselves how they can be “greener” when their sites are virtual? There are many ways but you have to think back further and revisit how you create, manage, and operate your site.

There are many steps to be a greener webmaster, and here are five we can show you!

1. Green Hosting

Many hosts now offer green hosting plans. Read the rest of this entry »

• 2 Comments

Below is a guest article from Sakura. He will be contributing regular articles to The Biggest Boards Blog. We encourage you to check out his website and check back often for new articles from Sakura in the future!

Choosing Forum Staff
By Sakura

Over the years I have joined many forums.  On each forum I make a point to investigate how the site’s Admin (aka the owner) has their staff set up. I am here to give you my opinions on choosing forum staff.

First off let’s start with choosing Admins and what they do about the forums.

The Admins are in charge of the whole forum and have Admin Control Panel access. They can change the forum settings, change themes, etc. This MUST be a person you trust.

The best way in my opinion is to pick a good trusted friend to help you run your forum board. Someone you actually know in real life (offline) and have a long history with is normally the best way to go.  But in many cases a person like this is not available. For example in my case I chose a trusted internet friend who I had a known for a considerable amount of time online and felt would make a positive addition to the management team on my forum. After some discussion about exactly what being in the position would mean they were made an Admin to help me manage and run my forums.

Choose your co-Admin wisely, because Read the rest of this entry »

• 0 Comments

On the Main Site Directory we have added the ability to filter the forums in the directory by Category. You will now see a new drop down menu on all of the pages of the main site and can choose whichever category group of forums you want to view. The results will be shown from largest forum in the category (by post count) to the smallest.

We are still tweaking this new feature, but are excited about the addition to the site and directory. More info to come about this and other new features soon.

• 0 Comments

Below is a guest article from Soundboy aka James from Broadcasting World. He will be contributing regular articles to The Biggest Boards Blog. We encourage you to check out his website and check back often for new articles from Soundboy /James!

It’s pretty obvious why most online communities fail, but most people and the people who make these forums don’t see it.

Hi I’m James, A.K.A Soundboy.  I am new to The Biggest Boards Blog and I’m here to tell you the best secrets, tips and freebies for webmasters and forum owners.

There are too many dumb webmasters out there with little to no knowledge of how to spend money wisely and actually run a forum efficiently. I see too many mistakes in sites and forums, its a wonder they just don’t give up. Doesn’t NO new member sign ups mean anything to them? Here is my top 5 list of things not to do!

1. Leave It To Survive

You cannot just buy software, throw a new forum up onto the net…then abandon it and expect it to grow! You need content, members (friends, family) and you need to concentrate! I bet there are MILLIONS of forums just lying around! Get off your bums and get it running. Any forum can become a hit with content, patience, good management, and something different. But remember, you need to Read the rest of this entry »

• 3 Comments

As of today over 400 forums and message boards have submitted to The Big List !

The growth has been incredible and we hope to be over 1000 forums submitted in the near future.

Thank you to everyone for helping spread the word about The Biggest boards!

• 1 Comment

We have adjusted our automated script to now pull the stats (members, threads, posts) from each forum already on the list 4 times a day. The times are 12 midnight, 6am, 12 noon and 6pm (all Eastern Standard Time).

New forums that submit to be on The Big List will now show up within 2 hours of being submitting. After that they will fall into the update schedule mentioned above with all of the other forums..

We have done this so the rankings for each forum will update more frequently during the day. This will also help make the statistics shown on the list at any given time more accurate and current.

We thank you again for your ongoing support referring sites to sign up on The Big List and for you participation here on the forums!

To Subscribe to receive email notifications when new comments are made please use the form below!

• 5 Comments

We are working on some badges and images that you can add to your site to show off your site profile page.  To get the code you will just need to go to your site profile page here and you will see your image that will show info about your site.

Please feel free to share ideas on what should be on this image for your site and what sizes you would want available.

• 2 Comments