Do You Pay For Forum Posts?

[Ravenfreak]

I've never purchased posts for my forum with cash before. I've requested posting packages on a few forums using forum currency though. It can help bring some good activity to your forum, since most people who are posting for money must post high quality posts otherwise it can hurt their business.

 

[joelr]

Some thoughts:

If you are paying for posts, you are not building a sustainable community.

If you are paying for posts, you are not attracting returning members.

If you are paying for posts, you will never get the best of replies.

If you are paying for posts, you are paying for the shallowest of engagement and activity that will stop as soon as you stop paying. Why would you ever do that?

If you pay for posts, you are - and this is blunt and candid and real - paying for the wrong part of the community development pipeline. Pay for content. Pay for strategy implementation. If you're going to spend money, invest in those front end activities that will yield an audience of members in an organic manner. Money is absolutely a tool that every webmaster should consider in their arsenal, but knowing where to deploy that money is important.

 

[Reverie]

I won a contest at a forum and was given cash on a website to use. The only thing they really provided were posts. So I used my money towards that. Was not the best content, but did create a few discussions that weren't led by me. It is definitely more of a temporary bandaid and like joelr stated, is not building a sustainable community.

I think the way I used it was fine, and I deleted threads I did not enjoy or find would be appropriate on the forum.

I think if you have to pay people to participate on your forum and you heavily rely on that you're going to be sad with the end results. You won't find people to stick around. Unless your forum is all post for pay - if that's the case you'll probably get people to stick around but I think you'll lose out on money likely. The content might not be very "real" either.

 

[Jason]

For my drumming one, I will need to pay until I can get enough drummers in there motivated to post just "because". In fact, I probably need to pay a few drummers even after that.