I'm having trouble marketing my social networking site.

It's an academic site mainly for students at my college campus (and everyone else)

The problem is, I posted flyers all over campus , and i spent 70 bucks on facebook to advertise (so far .05% click through rate). I told my friends and everything, etc. I tried stumbleupon, but got .05% conversion rate. (a lot of visitors, though)

But so far, i have only had 10 people sign up, and only 1 has posted.

My site's basically a Web 2.0+forum, so people have to post in order for the site to work. http://tinyurl.com/2bjkzn (login test9, test9)

I don't want to give people "links" to categories on the front page, because it's basically empty except for 50 or so topics made by myself!

Please help, this is so hard...

 

I wonder if the market for social networking websites is now reaching a saturation point. By now, 2008, maybe all the experts with diverse passions have been satisfied - webmasters have to ask what is their site's value added experience for users? What makes them better than facebook? yours is academic insights? when facebook.com is so customizable to allow passion to construct widgets and groups for the world stage ??
The world's next generation (dare i say web 2.0) social networking sites must provide users with rewards.
The reward could be access to rare and valuable data that is available no where else online (that's your angle I reckon).
facebook widgets should be constructed to be commodify the value added experience to bring an elite to your pages