How did you get your first 100 members?

Getting a new forum off the ground is one of the hardest tasks. The "empty room syndrome" deters real engagement, leaving most early traffic to bounce before ever registering.

Once you hit 100 members - people who actually log in, create topics, and reply - the community usually starts building its own momentum. But getting to that initial milestone requires lots of effort.

What’s the #1 tactic that actually works to get your first 100 members? And what is a complete waste of time?

There’s only been two forums of mine that had over 100 members. The first one was a forum for a game that was funded on Kickstarter, this was in 2013 so forums were still very active and many people were still using them. This was Mighty No. 9 Universe, and I got my members from both Reddit and Twitter but most of them came from Twitter I suspect. My second one is Thee Zone but that took a while to get there, plus it’s three different forums merged together. I mainly got most of my members from promotional forums.

Getting 100 members is a really great milestone for many forum owners. However, just getting 100 members alonebis not enough. You also need active members who would constantly and consistently post threads and post on the forum and stay active. Regardless of that, if you have gained 100 members already, then this man's that your forum has the potential to grow.

A big problem though is whether or not they are spambots or real members. For instance, I got 61 and 78 members for two forums, respectively - but I don’t know if they are spambots. Well, they haven’s posted spam so maybe they’re real - but then again, they aren’t posting anything at all!