Building an online community is not a case where you automatically get noticed and visitors flock to your site. Besides having a plan and content to engage visitors, recruitment must be an ongoing effort. The Web is full of lively communities vying for attention. The good news is the Web also provides many opportunities for community recruitment.
In our case we were very lucky to have a site which draws millions of visitors, java.com. Most are directed there to get the latest software updates for their PC's. We just intercept them and offer an opportunity to join our beta program. They click over to our invitation page for some background information and click one button to register. That registration entitles them to download our application and provide their email address for future communications.
