Would you pay people to post on your forum. Is it even a good idea to begin with?
I came across GetACommunity.com when I was reading Blogtrepreneur. Adnan was lamenting the death of his forum due to a lack of posters, and the difficulties he faced dealing with spammers and and not-too-user-friendly PHPBB software.
The idea of paying forum posters have crossed my mind on several occasions while developing the Easy WordPress forum. In fact I wanted to start a forum on this site as well, but was still unsure as to the viability of it.
Looking at the packages offered by Andreas Bard, the owner of GetACommnity, it’s pretty attractive. According to the site:
We are offering you professional posters/writers that write educated and high quality posts.
Their “PostPal 3″ option looks like something everyone can get:
- 6 new members (posters)
- 135 posts (45 new threads)
- Minimum 25 words per post
- Quality and educated content
- Price: $33.75 ($0.26 per post)
I still have my reservations. If you have used this service or any other paid forum poster service before, do leave a comment. I’m curious if hiring paid forum posters is a good thing to do.
After all, forums are about interaction between members, which I think no forum poster would do, unless you’re also paying them to reply to other people’s posts.
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Good day!,
I’m new here. And it feels like a great place.
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-Susan
Hi
Well done, this site is really great. Just wanted to say hello, keep up the good work!
I am a forum poster myself, and earning some cash to support my webhosting and domains (for about 5 websites). But If I need, I can do it more pro and I am planning to buy an IPB License myself.
Well the point about interaction with members is never the problem with paid forum posters. The paid posters will always post as a normal posters and will interact with them too. But I would recommend paid posting to take place before you advertise your site. So that your forum has some content already when regular ppl visit it. Since the quality of content is assured if you choose a good service like ours or the currently top services. Never go for the very cheap agencies as they hardly take care of postings and just leave their posters without inadequate instructions.
Talking about our agency ie. http://www.paidforumposters.com we always try to give through instructions to our posters and that helps to give quality posts to our clients.
Hi Adnan,
Your forum looks great, simple & clean. I was trying to use BBPress.org though, as it is supposed to integrate nicely with WordPress. Have you tried this one?
Hey Gobala,
Thanks for the linkback.
I think as Robert said, I intended to express paid forum posting as a way of initially boosting the forum in its growth stages. After it has enough posts to attract visitors (ie. once it has passed the “tipping point” where a visitor can see that the forum is popular enough), then only real, valuable posters can further your development.
The boost would help though in getting your site ranked initially and to set the ball rolling which is incredibly hard at first.
Also I decided to move my Forum to Vanilla and its fantastic! Its a bit bare at the mo, but I would appreciate it if you guys could signup and join the conversation!
I think its a great idea. Forums are a strange beast and I remember when I signed up on a few in the beginning.
New members can be a little held back and most simply will not post a new thread. Many will not even add to a discussion even if they are knowledgable, due to the risk of being contradicted or even worse, being proven wrong.
A thriving community is often the best way to get new members. You will notice that a forum will grow a lot quicker if you already have an established community (or a seemingly established community) already there.
If someone knows that they will get a response quickly, then they will be more likely to return and contribute.
Paying people to post is simply the quickest way to get it to that level.
Ive been thinking about this topic alot in the last few weeks and its why ive built a new site dedicated to it. Posters can create an account and bid for posting jobs. And forum owners can create an account and put requests in for paid posters to bid on. Check it out.
http://www.paidposting.org/
Hi Robert!
I guess you\’re right… technically if my forum is NOT about quantum physics, and I get these guys posting on my forum, no one would know that they are paid posters.
Hmm…
The thing which depends is how educated the posters are with the niche you’re operating in.
If you’re on a forum talking about quantum physics, then the content posters will generally post crap content. So people visiting the site for the first time will notice that the content is crap and will therefore forget about it.
Nothing will build a community like genuine members.
But then again, it can’t hurt if it’s just a boost to a decently established community.
I think this is only good for when starting a brand new forum. New forums often do not have enough content and I believe most people would rather continue a discussion than start one on an empty forum.
Its probably good to get the ball rolling, but I can’t really say for sure since I’ve never used it before.