Are post exchanges effective?

I know I like to do post exchanges from time to time, but do you feel that they're effective - in terms of driving in new members - or bringing new activity? Sometimes you can have a great post exchange, and then the other poster decides to be apart of your community for good - because they enjoy it, so what do you think?

Are post exchanges effective in terms of keeping a community afloat? Or driving in new content? Or do you not care for post exchanges?

 

I do post exchanges from time to time. I think they help out, and I have gained quite a few active members through post exchanges as they all can relate to my forum since they all are forum owners & admins.. but if your site is a certain niche it maybe hard to gain members through it as they might know nothing about it, and might not have an interest to be active after the post exchange is over.

But active or not, post exchanges do help. If your forum gets no posts, then post exchanges is the way to go.

 

I agree - and you can also have people that do exchanges once a week - that way, the forum can grow until the next exchange. I've been doing them for years as well, met some quality forum owners as well.

 

In my opinion post exchanges do not work ( in most cases ). Post exchanges are advertised as something that will help get your forum activity, but from my experience it is exactly the opposite. For example, lets say you do a 5/5 exchange with someone. Sure, your forum has gotten a 5 post boost but that member may possibly never come back again. By that member never coming back again you have a member on your forum that has only posted for 1 day. This is very off putting to me and possibly other people, because personally Id rather join a forum that has 5 continuously active members than 20 that have only posted a couple times over a few days. Seeing a huge list of people who have only came to the forum once makes it seem like the forum is not worth joining or something made them leave.

Im sure other people have had success with post exchanges, but this is my opinion on post exchanges.

 

Good point, Yea post exchanges dont always workout for everyone.

 

I did post exchanges when I first started out, but now I no longer do them. Just a waste of time. They don't always guarantee active members and there are way too many impatient Webmasters out there, so now I don't even bother. We're pretty much at the stage where we don't need post exchanges anymore anyway as we are getting a decent amount of activity at the moment.

 

Good to hear Ashley, I dont need post exchanges either, but I do it for an extra boost which never hurts.

 

I don't even do it for the extra boost anymore. It's just too time consuming and there are way too many people in the foruming world who are too impatient. So I've basically given up on it all together.

 

I have never used it but will do once GI forum gets on track

 

GI? Please dont use in short terms as it might confuse members not familiar with your site

 

My bad, I do Apologize, GamingIsland will soon be in the action

 

I don't think post exchanges help the forum at all, unless they are active for active. Unless all you want to do is increase the member count.

 

Well the main reason for post exchanges is not to increase the member count, but increase the post count and activity.

 

I think they are good for a small boost for activity, but certainly are NOT a long term solution in getting members, just like packages really...

 

Yea definitely not long term, if you want long term you gotta work your butt of and promote and surely you will get a few people's interest.

 

Of course, just picture them as... steroids!

 

You bring up a good point, but you have a thriving community already - the extra posts help, especially if you're doing a thread exchange as well, thus; increasing your posts, and content flow. I've been doing them for years, on and off. Sometimes I can do ~100 posts in a week from post exchanges, where I chill and not do them for a month.

They help if you know how to work them do your advantage - like, a poster makes some threads, you reply, and get that thread going, or your members do. Who cares if they don't come back? Do an exchange with them again, and bring them back to your community. It's not hard to ask someone "Hey, do you want to do another exchange", because if your quality of posts are good, people are willing to exchange with you again, and thus, they're returning to your community.

 

Yeah, they're good for a forum that's just starting out, but I think once you even get to a semi-active stage, I would start dropping post exchanges ASAP.

 

Why do you say that? You can still grow usually post exchanges in a semi-active stage, its free content, why wouldn't it be good?