If you do some kind of giveaway (like the race weekends at bitminter) then you might end up with a bunch more people on board...
It's all planned for incentives on mining with us. Even at a 0.5% fee, you'd think that I was trying to rob people blind of their money. My server bill is $110/month, which, I personally don't want to pay for straight out of my own pocket forever. I'm willing to do that for sometime, but eventually I would like some sort of ROI on my investment of running the pool (to merely pay for the server itself) and additional allocations would go to incentives and other pool services.
This pool is literally brand new and the fact that it seems we're growing fairly well daily is a good sign. Eventually with some other payout systems fees will be incurred, but at a reasonable rate and competitive, but I don't plan to ever make this a get rich money making service. I like to give diversity to other pools running so that things are more equal and there are things coming up in the near future that will support all of this.
I'm glad to have you with us, you do provide a great deal of hashing power, however, if you stay or go it reflects me financially in neither way, since there is no fees incurred; so I do understand if you have to jump ship at some point so that you're making money yourself.
Outside of spamming the forums, I am open to suggestions on advertising it. I have two threads open, one in pools and one in the newbies area. Again, I'm always open to suggestions!
Alternatively you could try offering PPS at a reasonable fee for now and go DGM or something later - people don't mind mining at small pools if they get straight PPS anyway...