I see new users join everyday. Is there anyway to direct more users to the forums? Seems like more should at least be making intro threads but they're not.
The forums are the best part of the site, although, I admit I'm biased lol

@Andres: A good idea would be a PM from admin to each new acct explaining how the forums let users communicate in real time with other users about a variety of topics...or something similar.
We need something for sure.

Hell, I'd say send that PM to all accts but I don't know if that's doable.

I've tried pretty much everything (even bribing folks!) and it's become clear to me that the Forums just won't gain traction until we have a much greater number of daily active users since only a small percentage of overall users will ever use a Forum on a dating site.

What I've also realized is that our user base is spread too thin, so folks don't stick around because there isn't much activity in their area. It's that damn chicken-or-egg problem that I'm finding incredibly difficult to overcome. So I've started thinking smaller.

To that end, I analyzed what were the cities and state with the most users here, and discovered that Texas was high up there. So what I did is I added direct links to the largest cities in Texas on our homepage so that we rank highly for those specific cities and start getting more users from Texas. As more Texas users join, they should stick around longer since they will see more active Texas users, so that should help us to grow sustainably in one area so that we can hopefully hit critical mass in that one area.

If that works, then I can rinse-and-repeat to the next largest city/state area in the US, and so on and so forth.

I don't have many more tools left in my arsenal. I have a feeling our site user interface is "good enough" and that the actual reason folks aren't sticking around is because there just aren't enough active users in their area, so they move on to another dating site. This will hopefully fix that, at least in Texas to begin with, and then elsewhere as we expand.

@Andres: Well I appreciate you keeping on plugging away. Maybe that right chord will be struck.....as long as you're still swinging away, there's always a chance for success.

@Andres: Just thinking out loud...but it seems to me, in my online experience, the heyday of online dating has passed....or, well, has been monopolized by a few large sites. Even the sites similar to Dating.mobi (OkCupid, mingle2, etc...) have seen a huge decline.
Have you ever thought of going a different direction? Maybe a "friend" oriented site like the mocospaces or MeetMes but done better?
Or maybe even a strictly forum driven site.....for example, there's one I lurk that is locally based in my state. It started as a mainly sports oriented site for a university...but has grown immensely to include forums such as tech, politics, movies, music, and outdoors, with users from all over the U.S. It also offers PM capability between members but I could see how that could morph to a more social media-esque feel if it was acted upon.
That may not be something you're interested in, but I'm just basically thinking out loud.

Side note...and an actual working sex dating site is missing these days....just saying. One not swamped by scammers and inundated with pervy guys. Don't ask me how I know

I personally have enjoyed mocospace due to the games. Streetwars is pretty popular on there and has kept me there for hours at a time.