Another option is to find existing threads with a person trying to find more detailed information on livebearers and suggest this as a place to get information not always available elsewhere. I have been dropping links in places like that encouraging people one at a time. I don't expect people in a predominantly cichlid forum to have too much interest but livebearer fans are everywhere if you drop a link for them to follow.
You could say that I am doing it retail rather than wholesale. When you do it that way, it is also much less likely to end up deleted as blatant advertising.

Another way to get more people on to our web site is get more people into livebearers.I'm a member of a few local clubs,that have auctions at the end of each meet.I always try to bring a few bags of fish to each auction.Sometimes very few people bid on them and I'm lucky to get a few dollars ,after the club takes their share.I don't mind, because I'm getting people into livebearers and I'm helping the local clubs.Oldman you touched on something when you mentioned Cichlid club.We have in NY a large Cichlid club and auction,two times a year, that I like to attend.I always bring 10 or more bags full of livebearers;Swords,Guppies,Mollies whatever I have,and they sell.Recently I had the pleasure of meeting a local aquarist who came to my fish room.I could see in his face he was not impressed with my fish room,as he left he told me you should see my fish room,so we made a appointment for me to visit his fishroom.WOW !!! He had over 90 fish tanks full of rare wild swords,all the tanks had gravel and plants.seeing that fishroom and talking to him was the reason I decided to join this club.

Regardless of what someone may specialize in or prefer in the fish hobby I think any beautiful fish can be admired and wanted. Although I prefer livebearers, xiphophorus to be exact, I have still been wanting to get some more angel fish and some Sewellia lineolata. As for the posts being considered blatant advertising I avoid this by posting in the correct places. Usually in the livebearers section or in the links section of the forums. A true fish hobbyist would be delighted to allow their forum members to have other resources for information. Whether your posting in the forums, chatting with other hobbyists, providing links or casually dropping references to the ALA while answering other peoples questions any advertising is good advertising. If we could get everyone on here to do these things regularly this site will grow with leaps and bounds over time.

I just checked and we now have 110 registered users.
76 are ALA members
3 are members of the ALA administrative group

So slowly but surely the user base is growing. This makes me very happy to know.

The ALA BOD is pleased with the growth and use [though some of them don't come here and participate].

The 76 members is about 20% of the total membership; so it's interesting to see how many members will come here, and with the age survey, be interesting to see the ages of the visitors.

Maybe the leadership will be able to use the information in their long term planning.

We all have places if we think about it that we can use to get the word out. Church, Scouts, Kiwanas clubs Rotaries club, Newsletters we are involved with or read. The fish or pet stores we buy supplies, 4-H clusbs etc. Does this give you any new ideas. Let spend the summer building this up. gerard94114@yahoo.com

Those are great ideas Gerard. Keeping livebearers would be an rewarding project for homeschoolers too, if there was a way to get the word out in that community. Think of all the ways you could incorporate livebearers into the curriculum: biology, chemistry, reproduction, genetics, the environment and endangered species...

Unfortunately with the downturn in the economy, people don't want to travel much--and add that to fish meetings and fish stores--and counter balance that against the fact that during recessions, hobbies like tropical fish, grow. But this recession seems to be more ferocious and people are more inclined not to spend money on things that require an investment [think how much new stuff sells for in shops, the BS they receive, and the lack of quality fish they get when starting, and the inevitable fish deaths--newcomers are in and out within 3 months unless they have stamina, or a club, and then it is 3 years or less.

Versus the internet and gaming that is prevalent amongst youth of today. Not a lot of strong interest for to change to new things that require capital investment during a recession.

It's hard to compete against those things today; as all of the hobby organizations have shown the past couple of years. The aging of the hobbies is rampant.

All that being said, the more advertising and personalized recruiting that goes on, the better it is, and can be. But then, the ALA has to step up and retain new members. That's part of the member's job, as well as the management.

It's a conundrum with which we, and the ALA find ourselves in t his age.

I'm pretty amazed at just how much one needs to know to set up a new tank and keep it happy while it gets up to speed.

I remember my first tank vaguely back when I was in the army, early 80s I think. the ppl at wallyworld I believe it was sold me neons for an uncycled tank. So after losing fish left and right I gave up on it. fast forward multiple years later and I had two 25 cent baitshop goldies in a 20 with an UGF. They lived thru 7 years and multiple moves and my cluelessness when i was in college. fast forward to about 5 years ago we found a 20 tall at a garage sale. that led to the MTS issues I have now. You already know what happened... we ended up with too many fish in not enough water, fish started getting sick and some ppl on an online forum mentored me while i got geeked up, got a bigger tank and got the tanks situated.

Online is what got me into livebearers. I found the pretty little endlers whose habitat was getting polluted. Decided I'd like to give them a good home. In hindsight, I kinda wish I hadn't. they are just too prolific. but I still have them and make sure there are bigger fish around to pick off some of the fry so I'm not overun anymore.

Speaking of young ppl, a friend of my daughters worked in a LFS in his teens. He's the one who bred those swordtails with the unique coloring that i inherited when he got kicked out of his dad's house after he graduated high school.

Bettas and goldfish in cheap death bowls and the small tank kits (with horribly overstocked pics on the box) will always keep sucking ppl into the hobby because they're cheap impulse buys. those ppl who care will end up online looking for info and help and will put out the money and time/effort to get their fish/tanks situated. You can get most of the stuff you need nowdays on craig's list or via local aquarium clubs, so it's not as expensive as buying new. plus a rubbermaid tub, some prime, a test kit and a decent filter will get you by in a pinch.

I've observed our local club growing because our online presense is growing. When people go looking for information, that brings them here. The more info here, the more pages to find in the search engines, the more ppl end up finding you online. having a responsive forum like this one is becoming is a good thing as would be getting more livebearer content up.