PD is nice but we need more members

Hey guys. I know a lot of you enjoy PaperDemon.com and I want to say thank you for your continued support throughout the past couple years. The site has been through plenty of changes, especially recently. The site is great and all but I think one of the things we need most is more active members. But part of the problem is some members might not stick around because they aren't getting enough reviews or whatever on their submissions. So it's sort of a cyclical effect. We need more members to have more members lol.
So what I'm wondering is maybe we should have some sort of recruiting system. I want your thoughts on this. Perhaps have some sort of system where if you recruit 5 premium members, you get your account upgraded to premium for free for one month or the total of months those 5 members signed up for divided by 5. (So if you get 5 people to sign up for a premium account and the total months signed up for by those 5 people equals 10 months, you'll get 2 months free.)
I was thinking of having a recruiting and reward system for just standard members but I wouldn't know how to do it in such away that there wouldn't be abused. For example, if we did something like if you recruit 10 people to sign up for standard accounts and you get a one month subscription as a reward, what if you just had 10 of your friends sign up just to sign up? Like they may never have any intention of using the site. They may not even be artists or writers. At least if they are paying for it, they will actually use the site and I'm looking for more dedicated users.

I might be able to set it up where I would give you a sign up link that had your ID name in it and you could send that as a mass email to all of your friends, or send it to peopel through IM and if they sign up, the site will record that they were reffered by you. Something like that would be pretty easy to set up.

Any suggestions on this? Have you seen a similar recruiting system on another site? did it work? did you hate it? let me know.

Yeah If I could get PD to be more successful, I may be able to do this as a full time business. I would love to spend all of my time everyday developing PaperDemon rather than get a standard job working for someone else. It would be a dream come true to just work all day on PaperDemon developing new features and profile skins and then I'd also have more time to work on ZMT.

But I can only do this as a full time job if it's profitable enough. And what PD needs most is members.

One good thing about PD is that I haven't spent a single dime on advertising and we've got a pretty good memberbase so far. Every advertising I've done is just through word of mouth or by affiliating with other sites for free. But we probably get most of our traffic from search engines which are completely free. I optimized the site for search engines.

I also need to figure out what the heck I need to do to turn this into a business. I mean, I don't really know anything about starting my own business. I don't have any money to invest in PD except for the money I put in for site hosting in the begining. Perhaps I should look into getting a business loan or something? That way I'll have some money to spend on advertising. But what is the best way to advertise this sort of site? How did Deviant Art get so much traffic and so many members? What are the steps I need to take to make PD a success?

I have a year and a half before I graduate from school. If I could turn PD.com into a successful business by then, I will be able to just work on this full time right out of school. And my last year of school will probably be light. I don't have that many classes left to take. So I think I will be having some more time to spend developing PD in the fall.

Does anyone know some good books about starting an internet business? I don't even know where to get started.

Where to start

Before you do anything else take the time to write what your goals will be for the buisness, how much time you will be free to give to the site alone, how much money you will be willing to invest in the site at first for all it's needs.

Next:

The idiots guides I have learned many things that I thought were beyond my understanding by those lovely books even though I wasn't to sure about buying a book that was calling me an idiot They have a book for almost everything written in plain simple english then tell you the long confusing words that the simple english is refering to.

Give me some time and I'll get back to you in more detail

Just a thought.... To try and bring in more members you might post a topic in a forum at deviant, or elftown, or elfpack inviting people to come take a look. It would just be a way to get to a  lot of artists at once.

Yeah Moondemon I'll see if I can get one of those books. I'll be going to the bookstore tomorrow.

Zacula, I'm not sure if I should do that. DeviantArt and Elfwood probably wouldn't like it if the owner of a "competing site" was advertising on there. Although we probably aren't so much a competitor with DeviantArt as we are fantasy, anime drawing and painting while deviant art is all sorts of art. But yeah, if one of you would like to make a post at those sites then it would be great!

I was about to suggest the same thing , Zac just did...I agree with you though Sue. I'll check around, my roommate has a good friend who work in the internet world, maybe he'll know something.  I'll advice when she return from her weekend.

Actually, that led me to another idea Moon Demon. I could advertise with the Anime club. I could advertise both PaperDemon and ZMT. I could bring in an episode or two to show. The anime club is pretty big at my school and I know some friends in it. I went to a meeting once a while ago.