Why! No members?

[pikachu464]

pokemonredandblue.proboards.com/index.cgi

How come my forum,'Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow RPG' isn't getting any members? The colors appear ok. And I have an ok plot going on. I get over 60 guests a day on my forum. But not one of them signs up. What's the problem here? This forum appears to get tons of members each day, and my forum rps almost the same concert as this forum but for Red/Blue/Yellow. So I should have just as many members as this forum. But I don't hardy have any. And I noticed that in the amount of time I've had my RPG forum other forums like mine have gotten over 10 active members by now. So, I know it's not cause my forum's not that old yet. So what could I change to get members, here?

[The REAL Joey]

Hm hard to say. However I do have some pointers you might want to consider:

1) I see you've advertised the board around in a load of forums. While I was doing some advertisements myself I had seen you had posted on of your own too. HOWEVER, I am not sure what happened but the link seemed to be malformed. I think might have something to do with the fact that in your advertising app the e might have an accent and when posted it gets changed to code, meaning that anyone trying to access it won't have the right code. I think it turned out like: "Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow RPG: xn--pokmonredandblue-9ta75h.proboards.com/index.cgi"

As people don't have an exact link, that means despite all your effort in advertising, no one is able to get there due to the bad link.

2) 60 guests is a pretty decent amount for a small forum size but you have to remember that there are also a sizeable amount of Google Bots and other similar bots that trawl websites archiving data. Unfortunately, these do count as a guest so it might be falsely inflating your guest count as these are not technically people.

3) "This forum appears to get tons of members each day, and my forum rps almost the same concert as this forum but for Red/Blue/Yellow. So I should have just as many members as this forum. But I don't hardy have any."

You "should" have just as many members? Says who? Unfortunately the fact that your forum is so similar to this place could be what is holding it back. Think about it, if there are two forums which are near enough the same in content and one has a significant amount more of posts and active members compared to one that isn't posted in so frequently, who are they going to side with?

4) Lastly, age. Some forums are simply just slow to take off while others seem to hit a goldmine and get them instantly. Unfortunately, for the ones that do take a while to get off, they are the slow burners and tend to last a lot longer. I see so many Pokemon forums these days which rake in about 50 members then close due to their admin not being able to cope with such demands of a forum. When Zapdos Zulu started out in 2007, I can assure you that it took at least a good 2 or so years before this place even started to approach triple digits for members. It just takes perseverance.

I know this was a long post but those are just my thoughts to your question. Please don't take any of these offensively as I just thought it might help you.

[revolvingscott]

There's no easy way to put this so here goes: your skin's horrible. Please change it to something better since every time I visit the site I immediately close the tab because of it. You need to make the forum attractive to members immediately and that's just turning them away.

[The REAL Joey]

In all honesty the skin could be a LOT worse. There are no eye burning colours to be found on the forum and while basic is certainly not THAT bad. We can hardly criticise her choice in forum colour when this place isn't exactly graphic design award winner of 2011 either. The only thing that could help is maybe making the text colour a little more subtle but in all honesty it didn't bother me that much. Then again it might just be the contrast of black and light blue.

[pikachu464]

Well, what color do you suggest I replace blue with then?

[The REAL Joey]

I see you changed the colour to a white but if I may still suggest a colour, try this for the font:

1d7ad3

EXAMPLE

It's a hex code, so don't worry about it looking a bit weird. I colour picked it from the colour of the Blue text in your forum banner so it might work. It's bit of a shame that the colours Red/Blue clash so much otherwise you could try fitting in your design on that principle. I mean it could work potentially but it'd take a lot of fine tuning.

If you want to avoid the colour blue all together, how about this shade of grey/white:

c5c5c5

EXAMPLE

[pikachu464]

I think I already fixed it. A combo of blacks, grays and whites.

[The REAL Joey]

I just had another look and I must admit it looks a lot easier on the eyes so good job on that.

All you can do now really is continue to advertise and just try raising the activity and content of the forum. People like the fact a forum is active and is it means they have something to do. Hang in there, you'll get the hang of it eventually and hit a big pay off.

[revolvingscott]

I'd recommend you advertise religiously and stick around the forum. If you spy someone on the cbox, talk to them, make them feel involved.

[follementeiper]

Thought I might drop in and comment with my thoughts, well more like a thought, really. But, maybe try advertising around other forums, like Gaia or Menewsha, or other proboard thingys. Because, somewhat like what Joey said earlier, people on this board are already members of a very similar roleplay. You could also try adding a cool twist onto the basic pokemon idea, but, seeing as my brain is dead, I'm unable to suggest any.
Forums are one of those sit on it things. I really wish you luck with your board~