1. It needs to have a home feeling. Meaning, that the user needs to feel welcome and at home when he types and writes messages, they also need to feel free and open.
2. There needs to be a good enough financial incentive to make it worthwhile for their time, because as mentioned there are many forum OG's that wont just switch for mediocre pay.
But of course, there is more too this, for example one has to ask how does a forum provide users with that at home feeling?
While, good pay is easily answered, with more money.
Imo that's simply impossible considering that all of us are from different countries, with different cultural background. You can't please everyone in this case. The only thing that is recognized by all the people as something valuable, regardless of their cultural identity, is money. Like it or not, you can't make people work for you without a decent pay nowadays.
Yep +1, and if the people know Bitcointalk and are already earning money with it, it will be harder to attract them to a place without feedbacks, without records and without a good pay ...
That is why op needs to focus on small account here or catch people of other forums