Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Forums

That's a good question and I'm afraid I don't have an answer.  My guess is that people come to the site and don't take the time to look around and see all the cool stuff.  There are a lot of SF/F sites out there so we have lots of competition for eyes and most folks are clicking away before they get very deep into our site.

We get a lot of traffic but it's been a very slow build up in members.  Our conversion rate is pretty low despite our efforts.  Of course, most of our efforts go into improving the site not in advertising for which we have no budget.  We're concentrating on building the best site we can and we hope that the word will get around eventually.

If anyone got any ideas on how we can attract more members we'd love to hear them!

Well, thanks to you both for the great comments.  Always good to hear you guys like what we're doing.

I think as far as the forum goes there is some stiff competiton out there from a couple really big forums that have been established for years.  Heck, I'm a member of two other forums myself.  Very hard to break into when the conversations here tend to be a bit start-stop.  I try to stay on top of the activity but sometimes it's just me responding so folks go elsewhere where they'll get more and better conversations.  We've not had hit that elusive critical mass yet for the big growth we need to sustain the forum properly.

Bit of a catch-22.  We need more people participating in order to get more people to participate.  It's getting better all the time but we're still relying on word of mouth for now.

We get a lot of traffic from Wikipedia and Google etc. but most of the people that click through are just window shopping or looking for something specific.  They generally don't stay longer than a few seconds cuase there are other links to click.  For instance, we recently got a big spike in traffic from the SyFy channel broadcast of Riverworld via Wikipedia.  I suspect they read the synopsis or excerpts for the books and moved on.  At any rate, it didn't result in any increase of signups but perhaps they'll come back and use the resources in future.

Converting them from visitors/lurkers to members is the hardest part.  I suspect people are getting saturated with "online communities" everywhere they go and getting more reluctant to signup to yet another one.  I know I feel that way sometimes.

Any thoughts?

nicely summarized, Admin, you're absolutely right, so is htaccess - the website needs more traffic which can subsequently be turned into members.

one way to increase traffic would be to make a one-time visitor come back again. i hate to be a critique with fewer than 10 posts under the belt but i mean good - this website lacks a "catch", a retainer which would make people come back again. true, you guys have an extensive database of books and links to other sf&f websites, but that's very static. i'm here for 3-4 days now, i'm very excited about the website, i added the books i've read to my profile, skimmed through your thin forum .. and now what? i don't really have a reason to come back.

one reason to come back would be something that changes daily that i'd come to read and discuss in the forum. so what is interesting and changes often - news! i'm guessing none of the creators are industry insiders and breaking the news is improbable. well, that leaves second hand news from other resources. value add to the user would be a collection of these news in one place with opportunity to discuss them with other likely minded people. what i'm bidding is why not do a daily (other -ly) round-up of everything sf&f from around the internet - from items on sale to upcoming movie releases. doing this, however, would require someone to be on this full-time which seems like none of you can afford (am i right to assume that this site is a side project to your jobs?).

so this is a problem i see and one solution i could come up with. please, don't banish me for calling the site static

Missed this one.  Not sure how to go about getting short stories that I wouldn't have to pay for that would be good quality.  We had a section called New Voices for member submitted short fiction years ago but it fell by the wayside for a number of reasons.  I've been noodling on the newsletter idea too but we just can't fit it in right now.  We will be sending out an email blast to all our members with some updates and news about the site.  Hopefully bring some folks back for a second look.  We've made a ton of improvements that most people are not aware of.

I often wonder how the blogs I follow get all the free books from the publishers?  I'd like to get my hands on a few and do some giveaways.  Maybe in exchange for reviews that we can add to the blog? Free stuff always brings folks around.