An anonymous user asked me:

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I'm just curious if you have advice on recruiting new people and getting reach other that just advertising? My site has just started and is lacking in peeps. I don't want to give up, but there are lots of sites out there with lots of people that I could easily jump into. How do I bring some over to mine? 

Hello anon and thank you for the ask!

It is difficult to say that there are things you can do to attract people to your forum without advertising, but there are definitely things you can do to make guests want to stay!

• Have activity on your forum. No one wants to join an empty forum, one without any posts. That means if you are the only member, you need to be posting- even if it's with yourself! This also means that hiding the IC forums from guests is a very bad idea.
• Make it easy to join. People are impatient and want to get started as quickly as possible. You can help things move along by streamlining the joining process. Make all your documentation easy to find, have a starter guide to walk people through the joining process, have a simple application (or the option for one- some people do prefer the much longer and more detailed ones), be quick on checking applications.
• Be unique. Your forum needs to offer something that others do not, otherwise there's no reason for anyone to join it. Being unique doesn't mean that the entire concept has to be something incomprehensible, but if you notice that a lot of other forums in your genre do things a certain way, try to find a spin to put on it. Familiarity is good, but monotony is not.
• Be present. In the same vein as being active, you- the admin- need to have a presence on the site. Post in the cbox, even if you don't have anyone to talk to.
• Have wanted ads posted. Some people find it easier to join in to a roleplay if there are some wanted ads available for the taking. They're a good way for people to quickly get plots, character interactions, and even a bit of backstory.
• Reward people for signing up. If there is a monetary system on the site or any sort of items- anything exclusive that can be earned, really- it's always nice to give newbies a little something extra for joining up!
• BE POSITIVE. It's majorly off-putting to see negative comments in a cbox- about being bored, not having posts to do, not having muse, etc. Also on resource forums, it's a very good idea to share the FUN times you have on your forum instead of all of your frustrations. Obviously, one way makes your site seem like a nice place to be vs. an unhappy place. You want your forum to be a happy place!

None of that gets the word out about your forum, however. You do have to do some form of advertising in order to get people to stop by the site. There are a multitude of ways in which you can do this:

• Tell your friends. All of them. Even the ones who aren't interested. They might come across someone who is interested in what you can offer and send them your way.
• Be sociable. Make new friends, even people who aren't interested in joining your forum. It never hurts to meet new people, and the same logic above applies here. Even if they aren't interested in your forum, your new buddies might meet someone who is and can send them your way.
• Put your site in your signature on every site you're on that allows it. Resource sites like The Initiative are a great way to passively advertise your forum simply by posting and being active there. They can give users an idea of who you are as an admin and a player, and people who like the things you say might stop by and take a peek at your forum.
• Get listed everywhere you can. This includes directories, but also top sites. These are another wonderful way to passively advertise for your site, requiring you to only click a button occasionally (in the case of top sites). 
• Advertise on tumblr directories. Many of them let you post without having a tumblr account and they function very similarly to directories.
• Get affiliated. Find other sites to affiliate with. I personally like to affiliate with like-minded sites or sites within the same/similar genres, as well as panfandom forums (if I'm running a fandom site). As I no longer have applications on my forums, I will also affiliate with any other site that does not have applications even if they aren't of the same genre as my site, for example. However, there are other methods of affiliating which might suit you better, such as affiliating with any and every site you can. If those sites die, then your button is stuck on their index forever and ever. Affiliates are another form of passive advertising.
• Advertise on other social media. Even just one post makes a difference, but having a promotional tumblr, deviantart (if your forum uses artwork or you have artists making art for the forum), Twitter, or even Facebook page for you RP is a good way to get the word out there in a way that's less of a grind than advertising on other forums. You can share links to plotters, open threads, character quotes, wanted ads, and teasers for plots to come on social media. This requires more upkeep than directories and top sites, however as most of these methods allow you to queue items you can easily set up posts in advance and just space them out over the course of a week, month, etc.
• Advertise smarter, not harder. When you do advertise on other forums, don't bother dropping an ad if it takes you more than 5 seconds to find the advertisement forum. If it's difficult for you to find, then it's difficult for people to crawl through sites to find also. When I'm advertising, I use ctrl+f and do a search for 'adv' or 'plug'- if neither of those things come up, I bail. Advertise on sites that have won awards or are currently being promoted on resource sites or that are at the top of top site lists, as those sites are in theory the ones which are getting the most traffic (and therefore increase the chances of your ad getting seen). Dropping large amounts of ads can be effective, but it helps to even post just 5 ads a day. You can do this easily by posting 5 ads on a site one day, and then doing links backs on the next day.

Lastly, installing Google Analytics on your forum is not a bad idea either. It will track where you get your traffic from, and once you know where you get the greatest amount of traffic from you will know where to focus the most of your efforts.

Hope this helps, anon!

- GR

If you would like to ask me for advice, you can comment on an article or send me a private message! Be sure to include if you would like to remain anonymous.