Have you ever purchased or considered paid posting for your forum? If so, how did it go? Were you pleased with the results?
I will NEVER buy paid posting, it's a scam. Why do I say this? Well, yes, your forum might seem that is has posts, but they are not genuine nor genuine traffic. Also, the person will be active for a bit, but after that...what?
I'd never purchase/hire paid posters. You either want to post or don't it's really that simple. I'm sure the service is beneficial to some but it's something I never wanted to apply to my site or ever think about doing. People tend to come to my forum to grab and go which is now fine with me. All I have to do is add a little content every now and again to keep people returning which is normally a matter of 5 minutes to an hours work. :doh:
I once brought it to Nei that we should purchase paid posts, but, for the aforementioned reasons, she declined; so out the window that proposal went. While I agree with her, I also disagree. Some paid posters are quite legit. Some actually may have an interest for your site's niche and may decide to come back over and over again. And, that is great. Paid posters are great posters and really post quality-filled posts. They also tend to get your site higher in Search Engine Rankings which is definitely great! So there are pros and cons to paid posting...
Okay, so I'm in the sort of situation where I don't need to, but the fact of the matter is still that - it's a scam. It's not true activity, and if you are fulfilling a genuine niche you should have no such troubles as long as you are willing to do the work. I would, however, consider a paid promotion service to drive genuine traffic to your forums, and as a part of that, of course, they will need to make a lot of posts in your forum. That, however, is different: 1) They are a single, genuine individual 2) After they leave, your forum still has the members they recruited 3) If your promoter did their work properly, your community will be ranking for some search terms. Ultimately though, unless you want to shell out a lot of money for that, you are going to need to invest in your community yourself. People aren't just going to drop by and make it happen for free.
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I wouldn't purchase it, however, I do know a company that is legit and prides themselves in their work.
*is gonna sound like an idiot* Now, when you say "paid posting", do you mean CASH paid? If so, I would never pay CASH to get posts...unless I were bribing a personal friend to join and stay active >>; As for posting packages, I've used a few before...it's true that the activity is only temporary, but it's also true that someone doing a package could take a real interest and stick around... I just wouldn't pay ACTUAL money to get a temporary boost in activity...
Yes. A commercial paid hosting service is one that requires you to purchase a "posting" subscription, so to speak.
Nonetheless, it is an activity booster and therefore, many (who are desperately in need of activity) may find it useful.
I wouldn't do it on my sites; I'd rather set up post exchanges and renew them if I'm happy with the quality. However, I have considered signing up to write paid posts, for a little extra on the side. Didn't go through with it as it seemed like a lot of work for little return.
I signed up and was accepted to one of them. I never came back after I got accepted, lol. But the idea of creating my own little service has crossed my mind from time to time. I think what is holding me back is the lack of interest and poor reputation of such services, as seen in this very thread.
I agree that it does seem like a lot of work for little in return. If I was going to invest so much time, I would do so in a post exchange - like you mentioned - because I get more out of it (content for my site) which is more valuable than a few dollars.
I used to work for a paid posting company called wiredflame.com under the management of a good buddy that I 'grew up with' (learning to build websites togther) I personally as a poster would make all posts genuine with a personal touch, i filled in my profile and everything and remained active for 3 months after without pay to please the client even more. I personally don't hire any tho as I like the idea of all posts being straight from users.
If every service like was like this, I'm sure they would get a lot more attention as a whole. Nice effort.
Thanks you always gotta please the client, and plus I tended to put more effort in because the clients always knew who was the 'paid poster' and they could find out who was registered as who and they hired me personally later on when they started new communities