Does anyone know of any forums that offer rewards & incentives for posts? One I know of is http://forum.coffeefun.com/ - they give around $.10 for a reply, which in turn can be redeemed at the store for discounts on real coffee products. New threads are rewarded a little more I think. Do you guys think this strategy is viable? I would be interested in seeing other forums that have on-going member incentives.
If you have a tangible product you are selling, sure. A lot of forums offer virtual awards, like adsense impressions, badges, avatars, unique titles, "points", etc.
I haven't seen anyone doing that lately but as roadies said, it does work best when you are selling a product. It might not be a bright idea to offer real money incetives at a general chit chat forum.
You members might not be that interested in this. I already found out. You know what keeps them coming? Good topics, nice community. They start loving the site and won't be able to "keep away" from it The site you mention might use the payment trick, but judging from the stats they're also hiding: it's not that big. So .. just work on the content and community and your members won't care about anything, but the forums
Giving away $$ is a great motivator for people to join the forum. However, when the lap dance is over and your $20 is gone, you'll find that most strippers move on to the next sucker. So, just keep this in mind. It's a great tool to get you started in the beginning, but your cash can dissapear quickly. If your forum doesn't meet critical mass, you'll be out of money. This is what happened to me. So here I am with little cash trying to revive a forum (NOT EASY!) Brandon