Self-Promotion?

Do you allow members to post self-promotions for products or services that they provide?

I belong to one community that doesn't allow ANY self-promotion unless you pay the minimum advertising fee to have your company listed on the forum sponsors list, which last time I heard was about $250/mo.

Even then you cannot self-promote on the open forums.

 

We dont allow any of this whatsoever, doing so would meaning we would have to allow competing forums advertise too whether they are in a similar niche or not it still means their gain at your loss and for free. I completely understand other forums that do not allow any means of free advertising, it is their hard work and why should others reap and benefit from it for free.

 

It depends and is taken on a case by case basis. I do have paid advertisers for products in our niche, those I protect. But if it something outside of the forum subject I don't have a real issue.

 

In signatures? Absolutely
Outside of sigs? ( IE: your own thread), not so much.

 

For products that aren't related to the forum's niche, links can go in signatures and depending on who the member is, they can create a thread in the Chit-Chat section. (A new member's promotion thread would be subject to removal more-so than that of an established long-time member.)

For forum-niche-related sales/promotions, we have a For Sale section, and that's where such threads belong. Only members who have either made a donation (of at least $7) or have contributed over 55 posts have permissions to create threads in the For Sale section. Evasion of this restriction (by posting a For-Sale thread in another section of the site) results in the thread being removed and a gentle warning sent.

In either case, continuous stuffing and promoting will not be tolerated.

Any competitive advertising/sales is not permitted whatsoever.

 

I completely agree with Nick's logic. Patrick O'Keefe has a whole section about this in his book "Managing Online Forums." He calls it an advertising forum. This section has an additional set of rules that people have to abide by in order to post there.

Partyon, I hear your concern about your direct competion. However, in such case I would say that since you own the forum - the rules are yours. You could create a rule that says that you will not accept advertising from direct competitors. I think this is fair as long as the rule is applied accross the board. For example even if you had a friend that was in the same niche as you, if you applied this rule you couldn't post their ads.

HTH,
RR

 

A little off-topic here:

Can you believe that CNN shows MSNBC ads and MSNBC shows CNN ads???

Back on-topic:

I'm not sure how I feel about competitors advertising on each others' sites.

A long time ago, I had an adsense account and I would vigilantly remove all competitors from my site. Then I thought about it a little bit...

I knew I had a better product than them, and after contemplating for a while I realized that I WANTED my customers to see what they got from my competitors and compare them to my own work. And on top of that, when they clicked on my competitors' ads, my competitors would need to pay for that click!

Unfortunately I worded it a little too obviously in my FAQ, and I was banned.

Well, potential customers voted, also, because I only ever ended up with one sale that was not to family or close friends.

 

I installed a Classifieds section on my main forum, members can post whatever they want in there.

A little self promotion by a long term member does not hurt anything. But if your a merchant, then you have to go through the proper chain of command.

 

i allow members to have a link in their signature, and also on some forums, they can post a thread about it in a forum for links, but they must post our link on their forum, and have made a certain number of posts.

 

Agreed. And the posts with their signatures need to have some content. Fluff with an ad will be deleted.

I have a classifieds section which is becoming more popular. But I also have a link directory. In the link directory I have an Umpire Network section so those guys can promote themselves, their business and support other umpires.

 

Promoting things of interest to the theme of the forum which make $ or otherwise benefit are not allowed unless they want to pay for the privilege.

For instance hosting providers, admin control panel manufacturers, would not be allowed if the theme of my forum was admin discussions. Also I especially have issues with competing forums trying to divert traffic away from my forum. They are using my forum I've worked so hard to put together, am paying for the hosting, and forum license. I find that to be in *extremely* poor taste and I do not think highly of those people.

If it has nothing to do with the theme of the forum, it might be ok, if it is by existing members, but usually that comes in the forum of spam from brand new people e.g cell phone sellers on AA.

 

I allow established members to submit a single banner for inclusion in an unpaid banner rotation slot on the homepage. They are only allowed promote non-profit making clubs or charity fund-raisers. If I claim my forum is a community I must be prepared to do my bit for the community or I would be a hypocrite. Naturally I will happily take a fee for profit making commercial events or product adverts.