New members are the lifeblood of any forum. New ideas, viewpoints, opinions keep the site fresh and people talking. Members can help the site grow and become more fun for themselves and their fellow members by helping to bring in more people to the site. How can you pull this off though? You don't want to just go on a spamfest PMing people and posting links all over with no rhyme or reason. That just will turn people off and annoy almost everyone. So what can you do? Well, here are some ideas people can use to help recruit new members to the site: Add a link to the site to your signature pic on other sites (if allowed by the site) Add a link to the site at the end of your posts on sites that don't have sig pics (if allowed) Link to stories found on this site on other sports forums (if allowed) Post comments on high traffic NFL blogs and leave a link (ProFootballTalk.com, AOL's NFL Fanhouse, etc.) Invite your friends on social network sites you are members on (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) Post comments on any football videos on video sites like YouTube.com and mention GridironFans.com Tell a friend about us! Word of mouth goes a LONG way. Call in to sports talk shows and discuss a news story you found on the site. (Remember to mention the URL!) Those are some ideas people can use to help the site out. Now...if anyone has any good ideas on how to recruit members the RIGHT way please feel free to post and discuss them here. I'll make sure to add great ideas to the list. Remember, more members=more gooder!
Pay a crackhead 5 bucks to walk around outside sporting events wearing a sandwich sign. In all seriousness though, I reiterate what I said last time you asked this. It is time-consuming but EXTREMELY effective to print up flyers and put them under windshields at football games/sporting events. I know, it's so low-tech, but it WORKS. The owner/operator/webmaster/whatever of a 49ers fansite I used to be a member of would absolutely plaster Candlestick parking lots and the surrounding area using this method, and in one season his site went from a very small unknown fansite to probably the largest non-official 49ers site on the net. It only costs a few dollars to print up a couple hundred flyers...like I said, it's time-consuming but worthwhile. I know a lot of you live near major stadiums and in big metro areas where you could slap up a few hundred flyers in no time flat. Buy some friends a beer to help you out and get it done in half the time. Since every member has their own individual referral link, maybe SRW could put up something like a penny or nickel bounty per referral link (flyer only) to make it worth the time and effort. I'd do it if I lived anywhere near a metro area that would be worthwhile.
You guys have one valuable resource here. I make bets on a regular basis and if I want to find information quick I come here and look. Crap I find stuff here that's not on ESPN or NFL sites.
Thats why this is the best site on the Web. It has the fastest and most up 2 date info. Plus as stated it list stuff even NFL.com doesn't list. If we can get people to just see the site they would feel the same way if the yare loyal fans as the 1s are on here.
No, I had actually brought up the idea to members like Platoon 86 months ago and just added it to the list when I was putting the first post together.
But it seems like a lot of sites don't want to promote 'the other site', so, how can you promote if it's against the rules? I'm sure I can put this site down in the blogs, there's no rule against advertising.
I am always willing to add a link to a site in our links section if: A) Their site is related to ours. B) They add a link back to us. We also have a policy here where we allow members to put addresses to their websites in their sig here if they link back to us or allow our members to add a link or show a url in a sig pic on their site as well.
Just wanted to give this thread a bump to see if any members had any fresh ideas or if anyone wanted to organize a recruiting team for the site.
I'll tell you what I'm doing to try and promote the site, it's not much but it's better than nothing. On my Xbox Live profile I have 'www.gridironfans.com' as my Motto and I have 'Go to www.gridironfans.com for up to the minute NFL and NCAA news' as my Location. I also have [GIF] as my Clan Tag online for Call of Duty 4. It's different, but people will see the site's name when they look at my profile whilst waiting for a game to start that's for sure. :icon_thumright:
Thanbks for the help JJ, every little bit helps! So any other ways members are helping to get more people here?