Good Way To Get More People.

ads, a login, so people can have their own forum like here, games, news, misc. stuff that you yourself would like on your page, and the most important important go to all the pages you can find and let yourself be knows and liked this is the most and affective to get this going and done right for your website also make your signature have a link to your page and a ad in it too not here but in other places like your email or something.

this is really an awesome topic. I found most of the posts were so useful and informative. Likewise, in order to gain more people, the topic of your website should be clear and convincing. Never ever steal any one elses work. do your job sincerely and i am quite sure you will reach your expectations very soon.
As already discussed, google adwords is the best way to promote your site, although it costs few bucks, but its worth it! Adbrite on the other hand is also ok. But if you are looking for something free, then i can say, its waste of time looking on forums or google!

I think 'mouth-to-mouth' way still much better than other ways
I've tried those link exchange, top sites, but all they do was make my site appear in google more frequently when i typed my site url (not by its keyword or content, quite Irrelevance)

Traffic exchange likes not really useful too
It's true that they came to your site, but wether they stay or not still depend on your site content (and it seems all those surfer want were other traffic or ptc sites...)

A friend of mine got about 5000 pageviews last month just for promoting his university blog to his friends
And when i asked him why he promoted it that way, he said like "oh, i have many friends here, i'll just put my site here and hoped one of them clicked "

As for me, i made an facebook page with lot of friends, and when i made some updates, i'll just put it there and hope someone visits

I think first step is submitting site to search engines. Then comes referral part to friends and family or to forum. Sometimes we get more traffic by asking our friends and family to generate traffic for us. Then comes the traffic generator programs part. Sites like adgitize, entrecard and 125exchange can generate good traffic for you. Some traffic generator are not good for pagerank. Like easyhits4u or submitting sites to PTC sites for traffic is not good for your sites reputation. They hurt your pagerank and search engine traffic more than they help. You get temporary traffic be it in large numbers.

Social networks like digg, facebook, orkut can help form traffic as well. Adding link to orkut forums without spamming can bring you some traffic. Digg can be a good source but you've to be reasonable on digg. Else this traffic will not matter much. For continuous traffic, you can post your blog articles link on sites like reddit, mixx, delicious etc. You are likely to get some traffic or two by that way. Also entrecard is one good service to bring traffic to your site.

Well here's what I did. I made a Naruto site a while back, based solely around the discussion of the recently released comics and the released Anime episodes. My goal was to create a healthy community in which my real life friends and I could discuss, debate, and have fun, with people around the world. With that in mind, me and 2 of my friends started. I needed members, of course, because there are tons of Naruto sites out there in the wide expanses of the interwebz, so I aimed for the core. Always aim for the core. What is your intended population? Naruto readers/watchers. What do I KNOW Naruto readers/watchers do? Well I KNOW that they read & watch Naruto. So I contacted a youtube user (back when youtube allowed manga to be posted up), and asked him to join the site. He was ready and willing to advertise my site with every manga that he released.

In a week, I had about a thousand members on the forum that I ran, and about 3% of them went inactive, everyone else was booming and lively. The concept behind this is that when you aim for a certain group of people, stab your advertisements right at the core of all of their similarities. In my view, their Narutardness was what made them... Naruto followers, so I took the most active youtube provider of Naruto manga at the time, and made him my advertiser. This was all when I used invisionfree, without hosting or any real flashy material, simple stuff.

Now in terms of content, like a user on the first page said, originality is key. You can't hope to give someone what they would already get on a more famous, efficient, and popular site. If you can give the users a reason to come to you, instead of to the other Narutards out there that have the candy hanging from their window, then you've got a win win situation.

Haven't had much luck on getting more people but one way that has always worked for me is using banners on SimpleRefs.com, usually offering 0.25 credits and up is the best way.
Also, some great ideas on here, going to try them out.

Thanks very much for sharing with us your success story. Its really inspiring and educative. I happen to be starting a new site soon and I was kinda worried that there already is one popular one that I think runs the niche but with your advice, I think I'd have to target the core like you say.

I have had other ideas about advertising that are very similar to yours and once I get started on em and put them on paper, I will share with everyone how that will go but I think its one way members can join up quickly.

Wow, you got a thousand members on your forum, thats amazing..it means so much started happening hey. I have run forums before and I will tell you a thousand members on my forums and i'd be the happiest guy alive!

Thanks for the share.

@Okara, that's nice story and really good to see that it worked out for you. There are many forums which are like ghost town these days. That include my own forum. I do get hits from google search engine but i don't get new members. Good to see that word of mouth and youtube promotion worked out for you.

I think those who want to get more topics and members to site should check out services like forum-promotion and promotion-source sites. I'm using them and trying to kill ghost town effect of my forum. Let's see what i need to do more to get members.