Multiple Accounts to Generate Activity

I've heard that members will not join a forum if there's no activity (or incentive). That's often true, and some forums just don't have that kick of activity they need to reel in some members. So I've heard that a method for creating activity is making multiple accounts and using them to make it look like your forum has lots of activity. I've heard that this method is nearly impossible to crack as long as you don't have anybody that can log IP addresses. Does anybody or has anybody ever used this method?

I tried it once on one of my older forums. It didn't work for me. Anyways, I'd like to hear others' personal experiences with this and how you got it to work.

 

Well to be honest, you can get away with it but its really not the best thing to. I would rather spend my time advertising my forum to get legit members than posting from fake accounts to create fake activity which I see many forum owners do.

 

I have been a consistent members of different forums ever since I got into the internet. From my perspective, I don't usually join a forum which has only a handful of members. It is because forums is for interaction and it would be a waste of time if no one is reading my posts.

Therefore, for any forum owner, getting more members in any means would be a priority. Well, of course, aside from good content, membership base is a critical component for a forum's success.

The more members your forum has, the more it can more members. This is actually a catch 22 situation.

 

Of course getting members should be any forum owner's priority, but not by any means making fake accounts and posting from them and having fake stats..

 

Couldn't you just as easily have a post exchange with another forum owner; posting some on their site in exchange for threads/responses on your forum? If you did three or four post exchanges, you would have a significant number of posts on your site to start with and not have to resort to trickery. I'm not saying these post exchange participants would become permanent members of your forum and keep coming back after the exchange was over. But, it would give you a good stash of forum topics/replies to start with. Most forum owners understand what it's like to start out, they know the new forum won't have many topics right away. That won't hinder them from participating in a post exchange.

 

I agree, post exchanges are great to get a forum started if you have a new forum. Even if the members wont be permanent, it will still be legit and not fake.

 

I think it might depend on your subject matter. I started a forum once focused on high school sports in my home state. Now there was a built in audience that I could tap and it grew faster than I imagined. But a post exchange wouldn't have been very effective because not many people outside of my state would know anything about the teams, players, history, etc of what was being talked about.

So I think it could be effective if you are crafty and not obvious. But some frown heavily upon it.

 

Well yea.. I see your point then, sometimes you do what you gotta do but it is very much frowned upon.

 

I have done it myself in the past, and it does help.. I dont do it anymore because I dont need to.. I have matured since then and its a very cheap thing to do. I see forum owners doing it all the time and thinking people are to dumb to realize.

 

I've never liked the idea of doing this. I mean, yeah, it gives the illusion of more content, but it's hard not to make it obvious to members, especially when the account suddenly dies once the forum gets more active, or when you start hiring staff who can see IPs. I'd rather get posts the old-fashioned way, by getting legitimate members to join and post.

 

I have never done this to be honest. I remember with a forum I owned a few years ago my way of getting members and posts was to ask my family and friends to register and post around the forums. They did and stayed around which helped alot when I started doing post exchanges and promoting alot more.

 

that is a very good way to generate activity. I tried that before but it failed

 

I definitely agree with this.

 

Not something I have ever done or would want to do.