How long did you forum owners have to pay posters before you started seeing results that your forum was starting to grow by real posters. My current paid posters are doing a terrfic job on posts, and I am sure I have a long way to go. I am surprised that some are taking it serious, and the posts went from 250 to 645 posts in just a couple of days. I know it is new forum, but I also like non-paid posters also The more I pay to get this forum going, then the less income the forum has, which of course it has nothing right now but debt....I think I have an awesome domain name, as you can check it out in the sig, let me know what you think.
I'm sure it varies based on the exposure of your website in the organic search engine results. Most people will stumble across your forum. They want to see activity. If they see activity there they are more likely to stay. That is really the only reason behind paid posting. I also like your domain name, I think it could work, and even like the idea behind the forum. It seems fairly original. What you should do is continue to lurk around forums like these and help others who have questions about the tools. If you're an expert and an authority figure in that niche then people will be more inclined to follow you, even to your own forum! If the forum allows, link back to posts related to topic author's questions.
Paying posters should solely be for the start-up of the forum and let me tell you, you HAVE to hire native English writers if your forum is English. Forum threads are similar to articles on a content website, they have to be good! Pay a good wage, $0.25 to $0.50 per post is necessary if you want your forum to have thought provoking, informative threads and replies. You simply can't have low quality posters bringing down the value of your posts. It will take A LOT of promotion, and a good 5-6 months of hiring posters before your community grows into something stable.