Thoughts about paid forum posting?

forumbooster · 04-19-2006, 12:54 AM

I was wondering about your guys thoughts about paid forum posting? If you've used it what could have been better and if you haven't why haven't you tried it? Trying to get into the customers minds

. Thanks in advance.

etech-peter · 04-19-2006, 02:05 AM

Paid forum posting is always a temporary solution. It does gets your forum started but it cannot guarantee that it will keep the forum going. Once the posts limit is over for the paid posters, posting will go down on the site, and it will adversely affect the activity of the registered users too. You can better spend that money on other forms of promotion like SEO, banner ads etc for long term effects.

yfs1 · 04-19-2006, 02:32 AM

Plus with so many of these companies coming and going (and farming out their work to parts unknown), I find the first 20 posts are good and natural etc but then they go downhill fast.

The only time I have found it even remotely effective is after you have sent out a newsletter to all your members, basically to get the wheels turning. In the end though, if people aren't interested they just end up leaving after a few days regardless of the amount of activity.

As far as people just starting out, I think its pretty much a waste a money. Forums aren't for everybody and you can probably create a few hundred AdSense and Affiliate sites AND promote them in the time it would take to have an even semi succesful forum.

Forums make very little money compared to the time needed vs. a million other online business models.

John Scott · 04-19-2006, 02:36 AM

There is a thread in this forum somewhere, in the Marketing Forum, where a member tested out a paid posting service. I cannot locate it at the moment, but it was a good thread.

cimmeron · 04-19-2006, 10:58 AM

I looked into it at one time, to see what it paid, etc., and the company I checked out paid next to nothing, but wanted (obviously) natural, intelligent posts. Seemed like a waste of time for all parties concerned...

DarrenC · 04-19-2006, 11:32 AM

To be honest most companies Cimm change little for forum posts.

You could on the other hand join an enjoyable travel and vacations forum

cimmeron · 04-19-2006, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarrenC

To be honest most companies Cimm change little for forum posts.

You could on the other hand join an enjoyable travel and vacations forum

yea, I saw that. I thought it might be a fun way to make some extra (this was a year ago, I think?) but na, didn't seem worth it. I'll make my way over there, thanks for the nudge

maria21 · 04-20-2006, 12:07 AM

Never heard of it - i'm new you see (to webhosting & marketing) but don't think it would work in the long run

petertdavis · 04-20-2006, 12:33 AM

I've used it a bit. The biggest problem is to make sure that the people you pay make relevant posts. Another problem area was the ones that reply to very old threads instead of creating a new thread, that was a bit annoying to me. Make sure to pay AFTER they post.

Will.Spencer · 04-20-2006, 12:40 AM

The problems I ran into included:

1. Posters with very poor English skills.

2. Posters who made dozens of "me too" posts.

3. Posters who made stupid polling threads (What version of Windows do you use?) to bump up their post counts.

4. Posters who posted dumb questions like "Do you use a wireless mouse?" and the ten paid posting accounts (from 1 IP) that all responsed "No, I do not use a wireless mouse."

5. Posters who posted fifty messages at once, making it obvious that they were not real forum members.

6. Posters who copied posts from other forums or pages from other web sites.

7. Posters who posted encouragements to illegal activity.

Those are the ones I remember...