Attracting new people

So, as somebody mentioned in another topic, we don't have a lot of people here and apparently it gets boring.

Well, I guess that's about right, at least to some extent, and we gotta do something about it and I need your help because it's rather time consuming to do everything on my own.

Since we don't have many cool features here, at least yet, we should try to attract mostly folks that are interested in online debating.

There are a lot of Facebook groups that are dedicated to debating and some of them have up to 20k people, believe me or not, so we should try to get at least some of them here. I didn't have a lot of time for it yet but I contacted a few admins of those groups but they haven't replied yet. So if you are a member of such group or just would like to help, please, try to contact any of those people and let them know that we exist and maybe even show them some of the debates that we have here, because we do have some really good debates here after all and they may be interested.

Apart from Facebook, I believe there are Reddit debating sub forums with lots of people, so that's where we could also try to find people that would like it here. And the list doesn't end here, there are other forums, websites and stuff like that so if you are willing to help, that'd be highly appreciated by everyone here :)

In my turn, I will finish some refactoring and get to implementing something new that could also attract some new blood here, but I am not yet sure what exactly it would be.

Thank you!

What features do you think a debate site needs? Your debate section is working, other than bad mods and your forums are working, other than bad mods. This place should have a facebook page. There should be advertising before real time pms. As soon as a member asks for something you do it because the numbers are small. Advertising should be the priority. 

There is a lot of things we could add to make the experience much better and we do have a facebook group. What kind of advertising do you mean? The paid ads from Facebook and Google and stuff like that?

If you have a facebook page you can pay as little as 15 bucks to have them advertise the facebook group. It will target people on political and other debate groups on facebook. So, yes. You may have to spend a little money. I drop some now and then to get sales on my etsy site. Like someone mentioned this site doesn't come up when you put debate into google. That's an issue. 

Maybe you should walk away and get a second job

I don't live in the US so I have different expenses than you, so my salary is okay-ish for this area ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This place is shady as fuck. 

You just need a bit of advertisement.

And if you can't find soon a programmer to boost your site, sell it.

Il Diavolo

I think DDO was super quiet for years and years before it finally built up the sizable user base it had when we all came across it. Considering that this site started off as a refuge for the very few who stubbornly remained while DDO went down the drain, its no surprise that things are still rather quiet. 

Just give it time, handle any moderation issues that need to be handled, and more users will eventually come.

I am afraid it's not a commercial website and I simply don't have any extra money for advertisement, especially in the America's region, which is too damn expensive for me anyway. 

I guess we will see. I do have some ideas how to improve the situation but I need much more free time for it, which I am afraid I won't have in the next month :/

Try to at least make this site searchable in google.com and bing.com. There are people out there looking for forums like this.

This. Try using some major SEO keywords like online debate, political forum, religious forum, etc. That's the type of stuff that would draw people in. 

I've done lots of work to that purpose and even though there is some place for improvement, at this point I think that the main problem is the absence of the mobile version, solving which can take lots of time :/

Yes, you're interested or Yes, you want to keep the status quo?

If interested, get to work on that mission statement and think about what you want here for this site and what kind of folks you want to attract? For example, do you want to attract reasonable, logical and rationale people who will provide relatively intellectual debates?

No one can help you with this unless we know what you want.

Again, its not the lack of features or options that need addressing.

Tell me how your solution stops the current membership from leaving here?

Let me sum up Goldtop's idea of who needs to be banned. Any theist since we are all mentally ill. Anything he tries to say after that is bs. He is as much as troll as I am. 

Poly says: Let me sum up Goldtop's idea of who needs to be banned. Any theist since we are all mentally ill. Anything he tries to say after that is bs. He is as much as troll as I am. 

So, what YOU are saying is that people here need to be banned? Who exactly? You, a self-admitted troll, for example?

Here's Polytheists's solution for attracting new people...

Sorry if you are not going to call me a Trumpanzee I can't read your posts. 

Yes I am and you have stated more than once if theists can post here you can't post here. Yet here you are. Troll. 

It's sad how you lie about what I say.

Don't have too. You posted it, it is there. LOL You spend four days calling every theist mentally ill. Poor thing, your age is showing. 

With all due respect, I think the non-commercial purpose stuff is something that you can't even believe it yourself.

Even if it were your hobby, you need some money to hold up this site. Have you ever thought about what you would do if this site gets more popular and you need to increase the bandwidth of the hosting service? As every site devoted to content, it's always possible to monetise it. But for that you need a bit of investment and time.

You've got to take it as a business anyways.