Help! I need members and posters! How do I get them!

mvnpro

HI all!

The site I have developed is my whole life! It is designed for mortgage professionals and others in mortgage related fields.

I have articles, reciptocal links, affiliates, a classified advertising section, and a forums.

It has been designed for professionals, however consumers may find some helpful links and ads on it.

My problem is that I have NO funds left to market with. My husband and I are currently calling mortgage brokers and originators as well as other professionals and introducing the site to them.
I have gotten some people to look at the site while telling them about it, but memebership has only increased by 3 during the period of calling over 200 people.
And my forums is dead in the water right now!

And I am offering really cheap advertising spots! Just five bucks for a whole year, yet no takers!

And I am taking part in reciprocal link exchanges, but so many I find are totally unrelated to mortgages, real estate, etc. I don't want someone promoting health pills or art on my program. I want to keep it as a niche.
I currently have a Google rank of 2 (the site's been up for six or seven weeks now)

Any suggestions on how to cheaply yet effectively get the word out?
I appreciate all thoughts and comments and hurry please! I'm desperate!

Thank you!

CannonBallGuy

You should get a higher PR at the update, if you have enough good links, etc...
That will encourage advertises to buy space and will help people find your forums.
You could offer cash or something in return for people being active on your forum.

mrbeankid22

Yea or a member of the month award and give them a prize.

Python

If your looking to promote your forum and get more members firstly make sure your forum is as active looking as it can be. No one wants to join an inactive or quiet discussion board. So make new threads and get some in depth discussions going about anything really.

If youve got a little money to spare I would recommend using Google Adwords (http://www.google.com/adwords). You can set the CPC (cost per click) very low and limit your daily spending. This should in theory increase your traffic and perhaps get your site more recognised.

pfgannon

www.postonyourforum.com

Its a forum posting service for those of us that are too lazy to make dummy posts and what not.

I'm using them right now and all the posts have been of good quality.

Python

^^ That website doesnt seem to be working

pfgannon

http://postonmyforum.com/

oops sorry about that.
http://punkreport.com

Almost all those posts are from postonmyforum or other paid posters.

Nuvo

The main problems when setting up a website which is costing you a lot to get going are that you're not likely to sell many advertising spots if people think your site is a ghost town as they would be throwing money away rather than getting more hits through services such as adsense or $5Link.
The best idea would be to make your forum appear more active, or indeed, get more visitors as people will be more likely to buy advertising spots if they think they can actually make something from them.
Once you have some money from adverising, you could then purchase some form of advertising for your site which would, in turn, increase the number of users and potential advertisers.
One way of getting potentially free advertising is to get some friends or family to put a link to your site in their forum signatures on more active sites, or even in the signatures you can attach to e-mails.
You don't always need flashy advertising to get a site rolling, a lot of places have forums where you can openly advertise your site or services, so it might be worth trying to make use of these if you're short of money.

One reason why it may not be popular amongst mortgage lenders which I can see is that nobody will want to accidentally give away any secrets to employee's of other companies or put off potential customers.