Bringing "customers" back?

So I run a forum of around 4,200 members, and I've considered trying to sell it but instead figure I can make it more profitable if I run it myself. My biggest problem has been (and continues to be) bringing members back to the forum.

I'm not asking for a miracle, but I'm looking for feedback on how to bring members back for more and bring things back into good profits (like I once had ...). I run contests, get about 300-400 people on the site that day (which I'd love to have EVERY DAY) but just can't figure it out.

Check out my site, www.ironmass.com, and please give me some feedback. Recently re-installed vBSEO hoping to pick up some organic traffic (to which I dropped to 260 pages in Google, from 30,000+) and added new games, incentives around the board ... I'm just trying to increase my profits, like any other businessman.

 

I have always found that if you concentrate on profits, you'll loose a lot more then you shoulda. If you concentrate on service, profits WILL go up and you won't be too busy looking at your income/expenses to notice.

 

That's part of my problem though, I'm 17 living on my own, working two jobs plus school and what I do on the Internet. I do have time to work on my websites, but absolutely zero dollars to invest into bigger and better things (advertising, site redesign [which I think it's about time to do], retail ideas [clothing sales, discount supplement store]) but I know it's not all monetary issues I need to address, just looking for ideas.

 

On the same note, what are your expenses? Hosting? Your time?

There is a saying, "in order to make money you gotta spend money".

Now, on the same note I thought your site had too many ads. Instead of having a banner per sponsored forum, have 2 banners per page. Sure it might drop your revenue but it'll allow you to charge more for the 2 banners.
Plus it won't scare your visitors away so quick. I closed the browser down within 5 seconds.

 

That's getting weeded out as sponsors choose not to renew, we'll be down to about 10 sponsors in two-three months. I plan on revamping the setup to allow for banners to be on the right side in Categories and between forums (random) allowing for 2 different types of advertising options (one way I can see a low-cost advertising [random banners], and still allow for the forum sponsorship our sponsors use currently.

 

P.S. Move you shoutbox down to the bottom. Right now its in prime real estate and by moving it down it'll increase the value of the bottom of your site instead of having all those ads in the middle of no where.

 

So your going to continue to chase your visitors away until the sponsors re down to 10 in 2 months? I was under the impression you wanted to get things moving now. Am I wrong?

 

I've tried shoutbox at bottom of forums, it just gets zero activity then. I'll give it another go and add a "Shoutbox" 'Quicklink' to bring users to the bottom of the forum in one-click.

I can't exactly chase sponsors away right now, contract binding us to a specified term that we will display their banners.

 

What agreement did you make with the sponsors?

p.s. I hope I am helping!

 

The emails pretty much laid it out, but the 'contracts' were written up by a partner in the site to which it goes into more detail, but it pretty much says that IronMass.com will agree to display a company's banner and host a subforum for discussion of the said company. Cost is written in (depending on sponsor or deal we made with them) and we agree to a set start/end date.

 

Read the contracts, can it be a rotating banner?

Have the banner show up at the top of their forum and any posts under their forum.

 

Anyone other opinions?