Can Paid-To-Post Forums Still Be A Success?

Paid-to-post forums have been a regular presence on the internet, with many popping up recently. The main idea behind these forums is to provide users with a set rate per post or thread that they contribute to. Some will also offer a marketplace or a list of tasks that allow them to earn additional money. In return, the owner will get a forum that will have a large amount of varied content and increased revenue from sponsorships, membership upgrades, and advertising.

The rates are low, typically $0.02 per thread and $0.01 per post, and for many users it simply won’t be worth the time and effort required to make money from these forums. However, it is a great opportunity for users in third-world countries to earn a somewhat okay side income, especially in countries where the minimum wage or hourly pay rate is low.

Can they be a successful business idea for you?

Several factors have led to the demise of paid-to-post forums. Whilst there is still a huge influx of paid-to-post forums being advertised on promotion forums recently, their longevity is hard to predict. When a new forum pops up, it’s likely that an existing one has just closed or completely shut down its earnings programme. But why is this?

Low Advertising Revenue

The sustainability of a paid-to-post forum relies on the income that the owner receives. The main method of this is through advertising revenue, and unfortunately, the rise of ad blockers has led to a decrease in this. There are of course ways to combat this, but they can introduce other issues. For example, the logical thing would be to block access to ad blocker users, but this can annoy some users and lead them to leave your site.  It’s also not the most effective way as there can be methods to circumvent these restrictions.

Low advertising revenue is also a result of the target market of the forums. Advertisers have different tiers for the users they want to target. Unfortunately, the users that tend to find value from paid-to-post forums are from countries placed in lower tiers, resulting in lower revenue from views and clicks. No owner will be able to bankroll a paid-to-post forum for a long time and will need a good income from advertising to offset the costs.

Content Quality

The main language for a lot of forums will always be English and sometimes owners will need to create some restrictive rules and guidelines to keep the quality of content in check. When you already have a small pool of users to target due to the low pay rates, wanting high quality content with good spelling and grammar can lead to issues. Unfortunately, it does need to be implemented at all paid-to-post forums. Keeping it unchecked will result in the owner paying for low quality content that can be considered as spam. This can lead to lower advertising revenue because advertisers only want their products and services showcased on pages with high quality content.

Rise of scams

Visit any existing paid-to-post forum and you’ll come across many users that have been burned before from scams. These scams involve paid-to-post forums that promise higher rates and on-time payments. And they work well for the first few users that request payments. But when the sites become popular and the payments become more frequent, they disappear. The time and effort put into the forum by users is lost without any compensation. This results in many users being reluctant to join newer forums until they are more established. And this of course makes it much harder to start a new one.

There are several examples of successfully paid-to-post forums but starting a new one can be a difficult task. You can have a great start but to stay at the top, you may have to reduce your pay rates or even in the worst case, convert to a traditional forum. This should not discourage you if you want to start one, but they are important factors that you should always take into consideration.  

Illustration by Svetlana Tulenina from Ouch!