Advertising? Does it pay?

A topic I am sure all of you are familiar with, the dreaded task of advertising your forum.

Some typical questions I often read in many places; the first being does it help?

Has it been successful for you?

What has been the best source of advertising you've experienced?

Other than resource site like Fix, what other avenues do you use?

 

Do you mean professional advertising like Google AdWords or amateur advertising like posting on other RP forums? For the former, Google ads have worked okay for me, but posting on other RP sites was not very useful due to lack of exposure. There's just not enough people who actually look at those.

My best and most creative ways to advertise have been making a TVtropes page, commissioning a bunch of RP artwork on DeviantArt (ask the artists to link your site in the description), and being really active in directory sites with a big obvious link in your signature.

 

A lot to think on as I've really haven't started advertising my site yet. I haven't thought about the TVtropes or even the DeviantArt angle at all.

 

I've been lucky enough to gain a few members through advertising sprees of other sites, but often it's advertising on over 100 sites for maybe 1 member. The majority of mine come from topsites voting and directory listings like here, RPG-Initiaitive, etc. :)