Hey guys, what's the best way to get more traffic at my new software forums? They are pretty empty as they have just been added (Aug 17th, 2006) to my already established software download site. The idea is that the software forums can be where you discuss the programs that you download... Each program in the download site has a link to its category in the forums. Since empty forums are hidden, it can be a bit confusing, but everything is integrated with the actual software we have listed. Once there are a few thousand posts in our forums, we have plans for displaying relevant forum posts on program pages.

I am actively learning how to have my pages indexed at a higher rate at Google and the other SE's. Most of my traffic seems to come from Google. A lot of my traffic is from the actual software developer wanting to post his PAD (Portable Application Description) file for their software.

We have all kinds of useful RSS feeds - I think that this is an often overlooked method for generating traffic.

One option would be to pay for google ads, but the forums are a free service that I don't get any money (worth mentioning) from.

I can post a link to it here in forums like these - asking for help. Some will obviously find this article when searching for something else, and become traffic at my site, eh.

Here's my forums: http://BetterWindowsSoftware.com/forums/

Here's the main site: http://BetterWindowsSoftware.com

Add it to forum directories and have links in your signature on all the forums you are on, i am in a similar situations with my forum (10th aug 2006) www.rc-forum.co.uk, you could also use a forum promotion company who do payed posting services (since nobody likes an empty forum) also paying members to post

Eg First 5 registered users once they reach 200 posts will recieve $20

Or somthing similar to that.

Hope this helps some, any other ideas from other members will help me also since my forum is just starting out aswell