Building a forum community

I have been trying to work hard to get some new members to my site and I am looking for ways that don't cost me any money to get members. I feel that wasting money on "posting services" is useless so please do not recommend this.

Thanks...

Content is King. Has and always will be. Unless your site has something special to offer to the users there's no reason in signing up. You need to figure out something or some way to entice members to sign up and post. Not necessarily a contest as they usually fail miserably unless you have a decent amount to give away.

Think of something that you can provide your audience, if it's not content a useful tool that they must be registered in order to use.

Typically forums take a lot of time and have little return unless they grow extremely large or some alternative income stream.

If you want traffic for free, only content can bring taffic.
btw, you can throw a pie for your president, news will bring taffic

Yeah, I started posting a few various articles in different forums myself to give it some kind of action... just waiting to see some interested people. I don't want to post TOO many cause then it'll look like I'm talking to myself :P

I do have the forum model setup so members earn "points" which are in return exchangeable into REAL cash. And until December 31, I am giving any new member a free 20 points after signing up and making at least 15 posts.

Each point is set to a fixed rate of .05 cents. Sio you figure 2,000 points is an easy $100 ... but here's the cool part, you get point just for participating in the forums. In example: Posting replies, starting new topics, completing offer's or incentive website (incentive website's offer the most points), referrals, etc.

Sound good enough?