Great question. I don’t want to sound like marketing guy, but you are right, there should be some plan at least how to get new growers :)…
I was hoping to get some paid promotion at other sites, but it surprised me that from about 20 sites I’ve asked, only one was willing to offer us promotion at serious price (still negotiating). Others were acting like we are competition and didn’t want to help as at all, some others just said price is $XX.XXX per year which is of course ridiculous. Maybe they are just afraid that new OG will be succesful.
So I think it boils down to some pretty standard webmastering work. Being sure the site is optimized well for search engines (and rest assured this site is), getting some incoming links and so on.
But what I see as crucial is I think to give our members the best experience possible. It is the power of word and sharing that can help us in the long time.
There were many mistakes other sites have done that we’ve seen. Some don’t allow discussing of some seeds or criticizing admins. Some have allowed uncivilized discussion and hatred to spread. Some have banned half of participating members and some don’t allow free speech at all.
We would like to be different in this and in the long run offer more and more features that will just serve our members. Very simple.
Development of this site is more marathon than a sprint. Many others have decided to close on (due to high cost or inability to monetize the site) or just don’t care about their site dying. There are many many zombie forums around the net. I have the idea of constantly improving the site one small step at a time.
P.S. If you have any ideas or can recommend sites to promote on, let me know!