I'm having a tough time getting new members.
There's no easy way to get new members, as most of the posts in this thread make clear. It's work, lots and lots of hard work.
Now, most people who read the words "hard work" don't really know what this means. Think relationship-sacrificing, day-and-night slavery, insane obsession type of hard work. In other words, think "the kind of hard work that most sane people would never put forth." Even then, you need to be working with a good idea in an area in which there's room for another contender.
I started photocamel with the kind of hard work I'm talking about, and when people ask me whether they should start a forum, I say, simply, "no." It's not worth it. Devote that kind of energy to almost anything else--college, a job search, computer programming, selling drugs--and you'll come out *way ahead* of where you would have been if you went the "forum building" route.
These days, in my opinion, starting a forum is a fool's game for the vast majority--especially today in the Facebook age. There was a time when "build it and they will come" worked. Those days are long gone. Today, unless you're playing with building out a forum strictly for fun, education, or out of some kind of passion (or pathology, perhaps), you will be
far better off financially and personally by finding something else to do with your time. Working at McDonalds for all of the hours you will spend trying to get a forum off the ground would net you a huge pile of cash in comparison--and heck, maybe even a "real life" friend or two to boot.