Never been a big fan of pay for posts idea. IMO its not healthy for over all growth of the forum/community.

Personally I would never do that because in my forum I would want quality posts made by users who are actualy thinking about the same things as me. I dont want as someone stated "mercenaries" pretending to be my friends and ditching me.

Now if you should or should not do it depends on the audience you are trying to get. I agree that the content will have the site grow by itself and thus you need content relating to your topic. For example if you have a gamers forum. Try making some of your own games or even ask other programmers with succesful games if you coudl host them on your site. Free game demos need no license to be distributed so that would be a good idea s well.

So please let us know what your target audience is and mind you if its something like Programming that YOU already have a great community to be a part of.

Hmm ... paying for posts ... I think I'll get some people in my head, but anyway ...

I have used some post exchanges to start up a forum. I usually contacted people I noticed had nice posts and proposed the exchange. Some are still active I have also used an "automated" post exchange ... was OK.

Everything I mention was for free. People would post quality content and I would do so. In some cases we're still posting in each others forums, not as a part of the deal, just because we befriended and we like the other's community too.

Paying for posts? Nope. Not my case. I cannot pay for AdWords or an ad campaign, I'll surely won't pay for posts. Why? because in order for a "programme" to be efective you need HUNDREDS of posts and tens of members. I am having over 200 members and over 10000 posts (a great posting ratio: 42 posts per user) and still I am in dire need of more people to develop more. Try to think about paying for these stats: 200 people, 10 thousand posts.

The sum is indeed huge and it can make a forum grow or just need more "input".

Wow, 42 posts per user?! I would kill for one tenth of that!

On December 19th I purchased 100 posts from both Forum Elves & Forum Launch. Days went by with no further activity. Finally, on December 31st, I saw a batch of registrations and lots of posting from the Forum Launch team.

Overall, it was so-so. Almost every post was a 1-liner. Some of their posts made it appear that English wasn't their native language. They started topics, and they understood my site's theme (Narnia books/movies). But nothing really substantive.

I've no idea how Forum Elves performs, as they never contacted me, even now, a month later. But they didn't charge me either, so at least I wasn't ripped off.

-Tony

Very topical for me as I am considering starting a forum this year (still doing research). I'm somewhat pragmatic about this, and don't see anything ethically wrong with going this route to jumpstart new membership. However, I don't think it would really work that well if the scope of your forum is narrow. Whomever is being paid to do the posting must know what they are talking about. It's pretty easy to smell a rat.

btw, my first post!

You can do this for free. You just need to see in many webmaster communities people who ask for post exchanges. Visit their sites and see if you're pleased with the way they seem to handle the posting. Then just send a nice PM. It works and it's for free. Not to mention you already know a bit more about the ones that will post in your new community.

In general forum need a critical mass of posts (at least 1000 - 3000 posts) before they start getting active with daily repeat visitors. In some cases it takes years to get enough posts for the forum to truly become active.
About a week ago, I purchased 500 posts from both forumbulge.com and dobump.com
These guys got back to me quickly as well and work was done in about 2 weeks.
Overall I was very pleased with my experience with both forum posting services.

If you need to pay people to use your site, your site isn't worth visiting and you'd better rethink your business model.

Well the problem is that when people start up brand new forums, the idea might be great, but no one wants to post on a dead forum. Even if it was an interesting topic, would you post on a forum when you were member #2 and there were only 3 posts? Everyone has to start somewhere. So the idea behind hiring people to populate new forums is to generate just enough activity to make it look like it's worth posting on. Then, if you have a good idea, you can start to take off on your own.