Paying for posts - Page 2

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.

I did that, and regretted it. I'd much rather use a paid service, even considering how weak their services are.

The people I did post exchanges with posted terribly. One guy just copied posts and other copyrighted materials in order to create his posts. Another guy -- whom I thankfully only did a 10-post exchange with -- just went into the general forum and posted "that's funny!" or "wow!" to 10 topics. He was so obviously there only because he had to be. In the end, I ended up deleting all their posts, and I regretted ever doing it.

I'm sure there are good guys out there to do post exchanges with. I just didn't find them.

-Tony

Personally I think the bubble may have burst for creating new forums, unless you have you are part of a community of which you have agreed with to set up a new site / forum, or a very nitch market that you could cater for.

Going it alone to create a mainstream forum, with out a major marketing budget, would be very hard. If you were determined, a "pay for posts" service, might be one of the desperate measures you would have to take.

The biggest problem with paid posting services is that the writers aren't being paid enough. I've found that paying my writers well above the industry standard and giving them incentives to produce good work for the sake of getting a pay promotion has worked great concerning the quality of my posters material. Also, I don't pay them if they produce poor work...works for me :)

I tried it once on my boards, and the company (shall name namless), just copied posts from another board and posted them on mine. 1 month into the posting i recieve an angry email, telling me to remove those posts. Safe to say i wont be using the forum posting services anymore.

SOME of these companies services are very thorough, the posters they use are hired based upon their general knowledge of a specific subject. The company will receive your request, then go contract out the posts to someone knowledgeable about the subject. You can find alot of these types of services on sitepoint and other sites like that.

Several of my friends have used pay 4 post websites and all of them had a good experience with it.

why not when you will have an active looking forum

Has anyone ever tried one of those pay for posts services targeted towards forum owners?

Actually, a while back, i had hired a freelancer to do this and was paying him $.15 a post.
When you start a forum, it is very difficult to get people to register and participate when it seems dead. As the number of posts grow, more people are likely to join.

Very true, alpha, but was it worth it? Sometimes when you hire people, they don't really care about your community, they're just doing it to be paid. And many people can tell from their writing that they aren't passionate about it, and therefore it doesn't do as much as it otherwise would.

i tried this on my forum....i just got heaps of meaningless and spam posts

Rather than paying for posts, I post myself under different usernames and this way I control what is written.
Also I agree word of mouth is the best way.
Better get real poster rather than spam !

I know that there are over 50 Paid Posting Services out there. And Dani is right. That this is a hot subject. And I only say this, is that there are many services who provide quality work with great customer service. Some have this citeria while other services do not, therefore giving the Paid Posting Service a bad rap. I also know that many forum owners find others who use such services as cop outs. Or unnatural way to start a forum or giving your forum a boost by hiring such said services.

And like stated before that many posters do work for a low wage. I do know that some of the services are trying to raise the pay. Like .01 cent per word. Almost equal to content writing, which I believe runs for .015 to .02 cents per word. But if the paid posting owners pay anymore than the going price .10 - .15 it would be very hard to provide reasonable rates off to client/forum owners. In fact many forum owners try and haggle the price to where there is no profit for neither the Paid Posting Service owner or the poster. Like the statement goes "You get what you pay for". Hence spam. Which is sad to say the least.

I do know in my experience that if a site is of a personal interest after the work is done. I will return if the information is pertinant to what I need. I have found it a tendancy that many forums begin to look alike with all the same information. I only return if there is unique and quality information to the forum/community that is worthy of me returning.

I do know that some of the services are requiring the posters to have 15 + words in order to qualify for a payment. It is nice to see that when paying out that you actually get your money's worth and than some if possible. This I can understand. I have hired a few of these services to see what they can offer. Some did quality, some borderline, some spammers and some just didnt bother to show up.

Pay me for my post :)

Can Anyone List Those Sites
I Have A Good Collection Of Posts Which I Submitted To Various Forums& Groups
And I Have A Good Creativity Too.

Please remember we have a no site specific policy. :)

say the truth i don't believe on paid posting services provided by companies ,
i would better get some members by paying them just to join and post like 30-50 ....then be close to them , pay then for post and start referral contest so i get real members, as i'm all familiar with my forum member, so they trust me .this way forum will go with neat and clean manner and looks like pro.
rest other member will join easily .

Why would you pay your forum members to post, when they are the ones who post for free? Unless it was one of those revenue share forums where the owner shares advertising revenue with top members.

Why would you pay your forum members to post, when they are the ones who post for free? Unless it was one of those revenue share forums where the owner shares advertising revenue with top members.

yea they post for free ,but unless there are some members and post who would get interested in it,so to populate some member and posts have to give some money to posts.

Let your members who visit your site anyway continue posting for free. Pay experts in your industry to post on your site.

I'm not sure about the whole paid posts area of online communties, I've never really tried it so I wouldn't be able to give you my personal evaluation, however my opinion is that these paid posting services are only their for people who are trying to create more posts on their community and who may not have the members to create good topics and disscusions. I would personally stay clear of people offering these kinds of service.

Somehow I am not comfortable with the idea of asking people to post on my community unless I know them well. This goes both for paid posting as well as for post exchange kind of things.

I guess the issue here is that I'd rather have a lower level of activity with a greater deal of commitment than a huge amount of activity and less commitment from my members. It's a pretty empty feeling for an admin when you know that a person who's signed up for your community is going to make exactly "x" number of posts and then disappear. There's no charm in knowing what a new member is going to do...

If you go for the right service you will get quality posts and your forum/community will look a lot more active and stimulated. Sure there are services that will post irrelevant posts tht do not contribute to your overall theme, but there are quality services out there (I know because I run one of them) that pay their posters more in return for quality posts.

If you can get hundreds or thousdands of posts out of your visitors early on then of course there is no need for this, but the reality of it is that most visitors do not want to start participating and posting until they see some real activity. That's where the paid posting services can be of us.

Don't look for the cheapest, look for the one that you feel will provide the best returns (cost and efficiency).

Forumguru, for many people it's not a question of choosing a service at all.

I think the point is that many of us don't feel comfortable or don't feel that it's right in asking any stranger to contribute to our communities. Whether free (as in post exchange) or paid posting, I think the whole concept is not acceptable to many of us.

Forumguru, for many people it's not a question of choosing a service at all.

I think the point is that many of us don't feel comfortable or don't feel that it's right in asking any stranger to contribute to our communities. Whether free (as in post exchange) or paid posting, I think the whole concept is not acceptable to many of us.

Of course. I completely understand. One forum that I run is a very specific niche community. It is beyond the scope of what our staff can do and so I never opted for paid posting. I grew it from the ground up. It took a lot longer to get going and I am still working overtime on it, but I can completely relate to what you're saying. Just pointing out that for those that are skeptical about the quality of the posts, there are services where that is not an issue. If it's not for you then of course this doesn't make any difference.

I have purchased a service from ForumShock for 65 new threads and 400+ posts and it is just now getting underway. So far it looks like I am going to like the results. It gives me some content to go with and fills the forums up.

Are the posts very relevant to your forum or mostly in the lounge forum?

Are the posts very relevant to your forum or mostly in the lounge forum?

Sorry for the late reply. When signing up you have the option to allow them to post in Off Topic forums or not. I chose to not allow them post in the Off Topic areas.

As far as the content that they have been posting it has been on target and good threads to fill up the forum and give it more of a active look. I don't know if I would do it again at 80 dollars a pop though :D

Cool - glad to hear that some of these posting companies are actually not scams :)