Forums are extremely delicate when you first start them. A few mistakes here and there and you may end up closing your forum after a while due to a lack of registrations and activity. One aspect of a forum that you simply cannot afford to get wrong is content. No one wants to join a forum without any discussions taking place and it’s usually a huge turn-off for any potential members. But let’s say you just started your forum, how are you going to get content on the site to encourage others to join? Well, one option you have is paying for posts, and here’s everything you need to know about it.
What exactly happens when paying for posts?
The concept is quite simple to understand – you pay users to create topics and respond to discussions on your forum. There are several sites and freelancers that offer this service for a variety of prices including promotion forums that offer this in exchange for their virtual currency.
Will it work for my forum?
There is no simple answer to this as there are several benefits and problems for using paid forum posting services. The biggest pro to using such a service is of course that it helps you forum with content that it may be missing. If you do not have enough people that you know to help you kickstart things, the best option is to pay someone to post content on your forum. You are guaranteed quality content that will encourage discussion and, furthermore, it will be much easier and more genuine than creating fake users and posting yourself.
However, you also need to consider the potential problems of using such a service. Firstly, you’re essentially tricking members into thinking that your forum is an active community. Whilst this may work in the short term, it is not a solution for the long term. You need to ensure that your forum has enough to attract a community naturally and content will not be the only thing members look at when deciding to join a forum. Additionally, paid posters aren’t going to stay on your community and post frequently unless they’re being paid, which means that users are going to think that others quit after posting a bit which isn’t always a great look for a forum, especially a new one.
Moreover, you need to ensure that you find the right content creators as one problem with this service is that you tend to get people that may have issues with English, therefore, resulting in low-quality content on your forum (which is never a good look!). Finding high quality paid forum posters can be time consuming and expensive.
What options are there?
- PostLoop – PostLoop is like a middle man for paid posting. If you are looking for content, you add your forum on to the site, deposit points into your account or earn points by contributing to other forums and then users can post on your forum. This is a great service as you can specify certain rules to interested users and choose a preferred rating that can contribute to your forum.
- Forum Promotion – Forum Promotion is a promotion forum that offers a package service to users. You earn virtual currency (FP$) by posting around on the forum and completing tasks for other users. When requesting a package service, the package team will complete a certain number of topics and posts on your forum, depending on the package you paid for with FP$.
- Freelancers – You can find several freelancers on sites like Forum Promotion or micro-job sites that will be interested in posting on your forum for a specified rate ($0.05-0.10 per post etc.)
What alternatives are there?
If you think that paying for posts isn’t the best move for your forum, there are several alternatives, one of which is hosting a contest. Posting competitions are extremely popular amongst forums and can bring a large number of new users and activity to newer forums. However, the prize must be appealing, usually much larger than the sum of paying for posts.
Furthermore, promotion forums like Forum promotion allow users to make exchanges between users. You will be able to make several exchanges with other users where you post on their forums and in return, they make the same number of posts on your forum.
Deciding whether to go down the route of paid forum posts is not an easy decision and you should make sure to look at both the benefits and issues with doing so because making the choice. Additionally, you need to remember that going for paid posts will mean that you need to continue to pay for this service until your forum has a natural and real community to ensure your community does not look inactive.
If you have any questions or issues, please feel free to leave a comment below or send us an email. And I wish you the best of luck with your forum project.