it has come to a halt

hey there..

i have a forum with over 6000 members and alooooot of posts.. but for a bit my forum has stopped getting any signups...

i get around 200 guest uniques a day right now.. but no signups..

most of the coming traffic is for the download parts of the board...

but the download links r hidden from guests with a message that guests need t register for the links..
and im also using limited guest viewing so they r given a message to register after viewing a certain number of threads..

so around 200 uniques for downloads but no one willing to register?

the way i have the whole thing working is i know 90 percent of these guests r coming for direct downloads.. but then why wud they not register..

i had some advertising on the board hence some revenue.. but since the guests have stopped registring iv taken it off to not drive ppl away..

so all in all its a tidy and active forum..

so how can i get more guests to signup

i no the feeling - i leave my forum open alot, meaning u can see the layout but,
if you click on anything you have to registure to view, i also divided my forum into
3 sections - new members stuff - new members tools - and a paid area locked without
account upgrade. now i get about 500 visitors a day but only maybe 20-30 signups a day,
why is this? simple people dont wanna registure they grab what they can and run.
only a select few will registure, even less so of thoes who registure you will find probably
90% wont post, they will login take what they can and go.

so for me i did the following, when i started my site in 2006 i was lucky enough to be
a moderator on another site probably the biggest proxie site there ever was aliveproxy
and not the one that is around today, as a mod i was able to promote my site through
and recieved thousands of members, by the time aliveproxy closed in 2007 i was upto
40k members, but for all my members about 5k were active posters, about 300 were
payed members in locked payed sections noobies couldnt get in. and the other 30k or so
were login leechers, accounts with 0 posts leeching what ever they could from the free
members area. so this year i wiped them all out, almost all of accounts greater than 6months old with 0 posts but regular logins were deleted and ip banned.

i no some people like to see large forum member bases but what use are they if there
just a statistic login with 0 posts, they do nothing , provide nothing, and post thankyou
for nothing.. all banned..ide rather have what i have now wich is a member base of just
over 2k but mostly posters, than prob 50k now with 45k leechers. ban em all..

next up is content, gotta keep your forum updated regular to keep your paid members
and normal posters happy, i average 70 posts a week on my forum. 8.5k posts
in 4 yrs.

advertise, were possible if your on forums of people and admins you no, request
permission to have a link in your sig. i advertise my forum on google
Results 1 - 10 of about 19,300 for ****** proxies. (0.34 seconds)
i also advertise on top sites, proxie listing sites, im also lucky enough
to no alot of admins on proxie sites ive helped out on, exposure there..

word of mouth for what you do also helps, being good at what you do
getting good feedback from your members or buyers also helps...
its a hard road when you run a forum alone but if you put in the time
and the effort you will get the rewards..trust me on that1.

reguards proxygo
proxiecentral