Do you have a general philosophy when it comes to marketinga forum or other website? For example, in my forum sites, I tend to focus on current members (in-house marketing) verses taking out ads somewhere.

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Mine would be building backlinks that would help im SEO and draw targeted traffic from them as well.

I would also spend some advertising budget should I see there is a real need to do so

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I personally just invite friends.
Friends invite friends, etc.

I stick to this mainly because im not good with SEO, and I havent got time to learn it (Damn school).

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SEO is tricky. Joining similar sites, getting friends who like the subject/niche is really key too. they do the work for you and keep things going.

I try to get as much traffic as possible through any means (probably what everyone wants). I try to submit articles to as many good article sites as possible and I don't worry about duplicate content as many people do. I wait two or three weeks after I write an article and upload it to my site so that google can see where it came from. If google hasn't indexed it by then I figure it never will so I submit it.

I get a better quality traffic from these article sites than google gives me.

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Quality content will always lead to better traffic. It takes time. Empires don't happen overnight.

Quality/interesting content is always going to be king! Although I have seen sites be very successful with little content but offering some special service or download. But wait, that might be considered content. Not sure.

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have to have both in my opinion. have to have quality content, whatever that may be, and also be able to market positively to the members you already have (in-house marketing), and the members you dont have (traditional advertising and promotion). It is very similar to promoting any business. have to be effective in all aspects and the better you are at each part, the more successful you will be hopefully. most big big big website owners who have done interviews say similar things - treat it like any other business you want to be successful and make sure to be on top of all aspects of it.

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