Membership Sites
Membership sites can be funny beasts. They reach a tipping point after which they gather a momentum all of their own. You will need to actively promote and encourage the early members of your site and you can do this by a variety of means. Offering a free 7 day trial is one alternative. Another, more effective alternative, is giving away free lifetime memberships to 10 or so individuals who you consider to be authorities in your niche.
Stop your complaining. Just do it.
Your authority members will populate your forum for you, they will provide early content, they will act as advisers on the technicalities of the niche subject area, and they will bring friends, followers and hangers-on.
Make your founding members your first affiliates and you will find them keen to expand the membership of the site as that will mean money in their pocket every month. Not only that, but they'll get to expand their own audience base.
Setting up a membership site these days does not require a lot of money or time. There are so many ways to get a membership site created quickly and on the cheap. In the Marketing Mafioso Manual I lay out everything I do to get membership sites set up in niche markets quickly - I even give you a simple membership site script you can use if you like as a 'bonus' if you end up getting the Mafioso Marketing Manual. I've used the same membership site script on several sites - including this one.