I'm sure we all know the cycle. You start a forum with maybe one or two interested parties and you start advertising your site. Meanwhile, you and your buddies are RPing and hoping that your site gathers at least a few other people to play with you! But as folks visit your site, and they see that you have only a few people playing, they say, "You don't have enough members. I'm not joining a site that doesn't have lots of members!" and they leave -- even if you and your friends are RPing daily, and in many different places!
So no one will join your site because it only has a few members - and yet it can't get more members because no one joins! Aside from advertising your site everywhere you possibly can, I'm hoping we can share some ideas on how we've managed to encourage those members to consider joining even if your current member base is small.
I'm wondering:
1. For those of you whose RPs have several members, how did you break that cycle?
2. What are your thoughts on individual members creating multiple OOC accounts with active IC sub-accounts, just to artificially inflate the members list?
3. If you've tried holding "Grand Opening" events or large group plots, what did you find worked best for you?
4. Do you have other suggestions to break that cycle?