Forum software, advertising, and search engines?

[Drawmonster]

I'm trying to get a small personal finance forum up and going, but am a complete and total noob to website development. Right now I'm paying for a hosted site with Invision Power Sources. I read some reviews, and people recommend their IP Board software for noobs like myself. Any experience with them overall? It seems like the thing for me as they host everything and I can just log in and administrate the board. But IF I ever get any traffic, the packages get REALLY expensive really fast, so that is a big concern.

I've also submitted the URL to the big search engines. Are their any other tips or tricks in getting a website discovered? Do I need to take out an advertisement or anything?

Thanks for any tips. I'm completely overwhelmed right now.

 

[Thuleman]

You have two choices, you can either learn how to perform all the tasks you need to perform (which will cost you time) or you can pay to have someone else to it for you (which will cost you money).

As far as search engines go, you need content. It doesn't matter where you submit it or how much money you put into advertising, if there is no content then there will be no hits.

Forums are largely a thing of the past these days with very few people being able to start a new forum and have it be successful. Stellar examples of success are the Minecraft or Terraria forums but most niche forums essentially fail.

The problem is the chicken-egg relationship. People don't register/participate on an empty forum. Because people don't register/participate the forum stays empty, which is why people don't register.

Frankly, and this will hurt, your forum offers nothing that other well established forums don't already offer, thus for anyone who is seriously interested in personal finance there is no incentive to participate in your forum rather than go to the established resources.

To sum this up; Cut your losses, close your forum, and think of a unique/niche market before you start up again.

 

[Roughy]

@officer921
I pretty much agree with Thuleman. Your forum is most probably doomed since its birth.
As for paid advertising, you can actually bring in a lot of traffic with it but you will have to pay big money. The more important thing is that a forum basically needs returning visitors and this is something you can not get with paid advertising.

It's probably better to start a personal finance group or whatever they call it in Facebook (I don't use it but a lot of people do). I suppose you have more chances to get some returning interested visitors there.