Hey guys, I just made a new forum about gaming and games in general and i need a solid way to advertise and get the word out. and suggestions? I know its kind of hard to advertise without money, but currently I have no budget, and I'm shooting for 50 members by the end of November. If you have any advice, please help me.

:) Love me.

Truth be told... Some people will say to add your forum to a popular search engine. You could do that, but that sort of thing really won't get you much new forum members since new site applications have the least priority over the older sites.

So say someone searches for "gaming forum"... Yours would be placed way in the back and the more popular gaming forums will be placed first. Registering your forum to a search engine gets you members in the long run, not right away, and that's if your forum doesn't die before then... And if your forum isn't popular enough, most forum-goers would rather be a part of a forum that has a sufficent amount of members instead of one with minimal to none.

So far the best way I've seen and done to increase your members is to advertise on other forums through your signature. Make a button that links to your forum. If people join they might add that very same button to thier signatures. These may spread, and eventually word of mouth comes into play and your forum has enough members to support itself and bring a steady income of members.

Now, this example is just showing you the best possible scenario. In most cases forums don't succeed. Especially when you try to do something that you're trying to do. Make a gaming forum. Several gaming forums have already been made and the most popular ones have websites backing them... websites with enough content to bring about several new and returning visitors everytime. EX: Gamefaqs

So you're basically competing with big sites like these AND the smaller ones like yourself.

Also advertising is only a small part of getting people to join... And having people join is only the very first step in making a decent forum. What you want to do is have something unique. Make a forum that's unlike the forums that are out there right now that share the same subject. Having a small amount of people register, stay, have fun and be active is way more important than having several people just registering and not being active.

I know I've fogotten some other things too... o.O;; ..Ah well.
Anyways, if you have any other questions feel free to ask me.

Oh yeah... and if your forum IS successful be sure to be there as an admin. Letting your mods do work is fine, but not being an active admin shows the mods how much you are commited to the forum. If you aren't active, the forum won't be either after a while.

Reminds me.... I have to alter some codes on my forum as well. -_- I can't find the proper codes in order to intergrate the RPG with my money system. Sad.