Hello Everyone,
After nearly a year of owning a Forum and being registered with the same Domain since May 2008 & with little traffic, Would it be good to get some Posters to make articles and post to threads to boost traffic?
I am doing it basically on my own, My service provider does not offer a service like that, Nor, Does anyone that I know of.
I have seen them throughout the net, Posters who will visit and post on your board etc, But can they be trusted?
Curious on what I can do to boost traffic and get my site rolling?
Thanks in Advance,
Sean :D

I have seen many people who pay others to post on their forums. Their posts can be anything such as informative articles, or discussion threads etc. As far as it comes to trust them, it depends what level of access you give them. Also at the end of the day you can review their posts to decide if they are eligible for the payouts that you have promised them.

The most important thing a forum should need, or any website in fact, is content. Does your forum have much content? You can try to post some articles, news, photos, information etc on your forum or get some friends to do it. Start a discussion or some sort, better still make it controversial so that visitors to your website would want to join in the discussion. I personally think it's always the content that turn visitors into members.

I used to do forum posting for around 5 cents a post when I first started out with web development. Although these days you can get cheap outsourced labor on certain web master forums. The quality of the postings really depends on the price you are willing to pay and from what I have seen whether or not your poster is a native English speaker.
A few tips though:
- Have the posters post over several days, it looks better to Google having 10 posts a day over a week rather than 70 within a few minutes.
- Also require the posts to be say 50+ words in length and for reasonable grammar to be used.
Good luck with the forum and hopefully you can get it going again.

I suppose that in this case might be good idea of providing free web hosting services in exchange to the posting on your forum
I'm sure that is not new scheme

Yeah offering some small prize for posting can be a great way to jump start a forum, the only problem can be the quality of posts which can sometimes be very poor and have a negative effect.

Thanks Everyone,
I am really wondering what will set things off, I added some very small php scripts like the Tell a Buddy or Tell a Friend Script but that would not benefit me much.
I would agree content is the key, I have been doing this for quite some time now and it really does not attract much, Maybe cause the forum is not unique or there are many like them.
I am not sure what prizes I could offer in such an economy at the moment, However, Suggestions would be awesome ;)
I am not sure what else to offer, I am still thinking of paying someone to post on the board but not sure what is adequate and do not want to pay if the posts are going to be (Crummy or not worth anything).
I would love some sort of action or something to get some new members, I have had members come and go the same as you would see on Hosting Sites (Visit and Leave)..
There are some that do register and then never post, Who has a Brilliant idea .. ?

Managing web forums is a hard work, but even harder is to create a community... I don;t like paid posting. People just come and post bla, bla, then go... this costs you money. The result is a fake, empty community.

I am a little bit confused by your question. Are you looking at hiring posters?
-mike

In my opinion the reason you don't have much traffic on your forum is it is rather blah. Your site doesn't offer any reason for people to go there.

I have used www.ContentCurrent.com in the past, and was pleased with their work. They use to be called: Forum Boosters. I would recommend them. Good prices, quick responses.
Trial Boost 10 $4.95
Starter Boost 75 $22.95
Pro Boost 300 $69.95
Enterprise Boost 700 149.95

I actually read an article somewhere about Content Current, Was not very pretty.
Their prices are relevant, I also looked at Forum Wizard and they had $3 or something along the lines of that for 10 Replies and 2 Posts.
New Customers Only. But again, I am not a genius so cannot say too much.
Crazy Penguin, I have realised that, I am trying to think of "What" could lure some potential members, In the same way that Hosting Companies lure their clients to join with Discounts and Promotions.
I am not reselling Hosting so cannot really offer that to my members.

There are a couple here offering forum posting. Contact them maybe for some example work they might have done.

Another suggestion would be to invite people you know to post at your forum. You can even offer them advertising space in exchange for forum posts. ;)

Another suggestion would be to invite people you know to post at your forum. You can even offer them advertising space in exchange for forum posts. ;)
That is a good suggestion ;) - One thing about me though is I like to keep my board clean, Like (Well Organised).
I can be very picky with the way it looks or if anything is out of place, I was never a fan of advertising banners and things like that, Thought if that needs to be done, I guess I could work around that.
There are a couple here offering forum posting. Contact them maybe for some example work they might have done.
I am wondering if they offer, Try before you Buy?
- Can you guys who offer Forum Posting here give some advice on that?
Back to the Advertising Space, I will allow a few members to have advertising Space if they Participate. Just will have to now find a way to work with that and have the adds show off on the left hand side only.
Thanks
Sean

I am wondering if they offer, Try before you Buy?
- Can you guys who offer Forum Posting here give some advice on that?
Most I have seen have a trial package for cheap. I recently sold my service of nearly two years, but the "tester" package was quite popular. For decent sized posts, do expect to pay a decent amount.