Just curious how you are promoting this forum. I have a couple forums of my own, and I've been struggling with the challange of exposing it to the right audience. So far I've submitted it to google, yahoo, lycos and all those. I've also been promoting it by hand on other forums. And recently I tried a little bit of google's Adwords advertising, which is pretty affordable, and rather customizable. I'm just asking out of curiousity. I'd really like to see this forum grow as I am a serious cadillac fan and would like to see this place grow into a large forum and become a serious resource for cadillac enthusiasts.

Scott

Hi LymanSS,

I'm glad to see you're starting a GTO forum. I love seeing new forums go up. Great choice in software, as well.. You're getting in on the GTO forum nice and early - but you do know that you've got some stiff competition. (refer to my reply in your introduction for why I unfortunately have to call it competition) Right? Another new board just went up - but I think you already know about that one..

Promotion? I've submit to all the major search engines.. That's one way. I don't think you're going to rank very well anywhere unless you have a web site to support your forums, though. That's probably where I've excelled a bit. I have a surrounding site..

I also have this URL in my signature everywhere I go. I've been visiting automotive message boards for around 5 years now. I'm sick so I can't think right now - give or take a year.. But I have no problem adding this URL to my signature because I have hundreds or thousands of posts on all the boards I post at. So, I'm never looked at as a spammer. I'm very interested in cars...

I intend on putting out some radio ads but I'd like to exhaust the free marketing techniques first. Radio ads are cheap. Have you considered it?

Sal

The radio ads are an idea which I hadn't even thought of. It could be a great way to draw in some new members. So far I've been trying to stick with primarily free advertising techniques. I too have been putting my URL in my signature in most forums, although on forums which I haven't been on too long I avoid it.

You're right about other forums/competition. I would like to see forums co-exist, but it seems hard for them to do so. In your case, I think there are virtually no other cadillac-only forums of this type. GMForums was the closest thing I found. I think you'll do well. I like the software you've chosen. I considered this and the Zeroforum software pretty closely, and almost went with this.

One advertizing technique I've considered, but haven't tried yet is a banner exchange. Apparently there are groups that exchange banner-type advertisements. You carry someone else's banner and yours shows up on other sites. I'm not sure if I want to do that, but I'm thinking about it. My other forum (I have two) www.ptforums.com has a few members who are promoting it with flyers that they printed up themselves. But I'm not sure if that'd work with cadillacs. It'd be hard to tell which owners are enthusiasts, and which ones just drive cadillacs.

Like I said before, I plan to stick around. If I come up with any ideas for promoting your site, or for improving it, I'll definitely let you know. You've got a good thing going so far, and I think it'll definitely be a useful resource for caddy owners.

Scott

Thanks Scott. How long had ptforums.com been up? It looks like you've got some good action going on there. I think a banner exchange is a good idea.. I did that with www.80sxchange.com and it worked out well - I think, anyway. It's no big deal. People are unlikely to click out of your site - and if they do, they'll be back. But, someone on another site who just bought a GTO will click YOUR banner.. I'd go for it..

Regarding ZeroForums - the only reason I've shyed away is the pricing.. I think once you've got traffic, it gets too expensive unless you've got your own dedicated server. I'm interested in finding out how busy your sites will get while maintaining affordability.. I like ZeroForums a lot - and I've been in the message board business since the mid 80's... (C-Net 64)

PTforums has actually been up for about a year, but I didn't promote it, or submit to any search engines untill about august. It's been growing slowly, but pretty steadily ever since. By the way, I wanted to mention to you that there's another cadillac related forum going up. Troy Robers (Corvetteforum.com) has just established www.xlrforum.com. He seems to have chosen the Vbulletin software for that forum, as he doesn't expect it to grow as large as the Corvette forum, and therefor believes that Vbulletin is a better choice. I just thought you might be interested. It's not 100 percent overlap, so it could be beneficial, or detrimental...hard to say.

Regarding the banner exchange, if you are interestd, or if you know of anyone who is interested in a banner exchange, let me know. I'd really like to give it a shot at some point with one of my forums. Right now the GTOexchange doesn't have enough members that it would really be helpful for anyone. But PTForums does. So I'll be looking around for someone with a site that would go well with it.

You're right about the Zeroforum pricing. It's a little steep. I just really like the software, and it runs smoothly, and more quickly than most of the other software out there. I think it's because of the way it's written, but it might also be the servers that they host it on. For the moment I'm going to stick with it, but if costs get too high I may end up migrating to something else. We'll see.

Scott