Cloning so many reddit subs was a mistake in my opinion. When a community is small you don't want to spread them thin across hundreds of barely used forums, it results in tons of no response posts which make it seem pointless and is the quickest way to lose new users back to reddit.

I think you should have chosen a few popular topics and created a basic group of maybe 20 or so subs for those and then let the users expand it from there by creating new niche subs as needed. This would have concentrated discussion and debate in those original subs and Saidit would have appeared to be a much more active community than it does now. Active attracts new users.