Members who register on your forum only to advertise?

[Cedric]

If you have a plug your board section on your forum then you may have had the experience of members registering on your forum only to advertise their products or services?. It's a frustrating situation that many webmasters have encountered, and it can be difficult to know how to handle it.

On the one hand, you want to encourage new members to join your community and participate in discussions. But on the other hand, you don't want your forum to become overrun with spammy advertisements and self-promotion.

So, how do you handle members who register on your forum only to advertise? Do you have a specific policy in place, or do you handle it on a case-by-case basis?

Some webmasters choose to have strict rules about self-promotion, and will ban members who violate those rules. Others are more lenient, and may allow members to promote their products or services in a designated section of the forum.

There's no right or wrong answer when it comes to dealing with members who register solely to advertise. It really depends on the culture and goals of your forum, as well as the level of spam that you're willing to tolerate.

What about you? Have you ever encountered members who registered on your forum only to advertise? How did you handle the situation? Do you have any tips or best practices for dealing with self-promotion on your forum?

 

[Henrywrites]

I don't think it is nice to join a forum just for the purpose of advertising there. How will they want the forum owner to feel? I ban such members instantly as they don't have any mindset of helping my forum grow.

 

[Debashis]

If the niche of the forum is not solely on marketing, they should be allowed to advertise in their signatures and a particular section of the forum meant for advertising only. Anything beyond this, if encountered, shall be responded with a couple of warnings after which should follow by a ban.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I always have a rule in place that if you want to promote your sites on my forums, you have to have at least 10 high quality posts. This is to prevent members from just joining to promote their sites and to never log back into the forum. It seems rude to just join a forum solely for promoting and then never contributing to the forum.

 

[Nomad]

I don't like these members, unless, the member has paid me to advertise, I might even consider blocking him for advertising spam.

 

[Empire]

They have to make an ex-amount of posts and content before they allow to see more of the site and then do over 10 to 20 to start advising. Well, lets change that to 50 content

 

[Tracy]

I don't mind a user advertising, in fact I encourage it to get data out to users... as long as they participate in the site... but if they ONLY show up to push their site... there is (in XF) several functions that can control their participation in the side (discouragement comes immediately to mind).. and one can simply moderate their posts.

 

[Paul]

I don't mind a user advertising, in fact I encourage it to get data out to users... as long as they participate in the site... but if they ONLY show up to push their site... there is (in XF) several functions that can control their participation in the side (discouragement comes immediately to mind).. and one can simply moderate their posts.

Pretty much the same as this.

 

[Shortie]

I have always been someone who never feels it is right to just register to a forum only to post my link and never come back. For me, it seems rude if I am honest.

I have a policy on my forum where you need 10 posts around the forum before you can advertise your forum and that does seem to work, anyone who doesn't have 10 posts has their thread hidden until they do have 10 posts to make it fair for all.

It's also a great way to help weed out the spam as well I feel.

 

[Cory]

We no longer have to deal with this on my board since I'm pretty much affiliated with the Jcink Directory my friend built and have a redirect forum to advertise there. We used to have an advertisement section before that. I think I required X posts before an advertisement was submitted, however. Requiring X amount of posts can be nice, but a lot of people will try and jump in there and make all those posts in the least amount of time possible just to submit their advertisement. I don't mind people leaving after their advertisement is posted seeing as that's their choice and I already deal with that having a resource board, where people come for codes/skins and never return. You can't always keep members around because some of them register for specific needs.