I want to try to do it honestly. If the content is good people will come (hopefully). I would hate to say that a forum got popular because you paid people.
What’s wrong with paying people to post? If that was the case than hiring ghost writers for your salesletter or writing articles would be wrong. Just my 2 cents.
Make your signature more noticeable by emphasizing the benefits of joining your forum, combining colors and making bold part of it. Signup in as many forums as you can, introduce yourself and make a few posts contributing with those communities. Exposure makes people check your link out, allowing search engines find your forum quicker than submitted individually to them, and indexed shortly after crawling.
Promote your forum the same way you would promote the website. Write articles about coupons, how to find free offers, retail deals and that sort of thing. Submit them to free article directories in the relevant categories. You may also try contacting websites that have a similar theme to yours but who don't have a forum - and exchange a link (good quality, relevant sites mind)
Getting paid writers shouldnt be looked down apon, its a normal practice. The problem with forums is that people wont post unless there is some activity there.. however you dont get activity there because people wont post, its a nasty catch 22. Paying for paid posters gets over this hump and even though they cost money, they help your forum get active quicker which means you can collect revenue quicker.
There's a few forums that give you fake money for posting, which you can then use to pay other people to post in your forum. (You can also buy sites & links & other cool stuff with the fake cash.) The 2 that come to mind are http://www.namepros.com & http://www.dnforums.com, but I'm sure there's more than that.
I've been looking for something like this, but could you please elaborate? The 2 websites you provided are merely forums for buying and selling domain names. I've tried google searches on "forum exchange", and searches here through DP with no luck. Does anyone have some info on this?
Paying for post? How about squeazing your friends and relatives to start it out. Put the pressure on them. I hope your site is getting a few thousand visitors a day. You will need it to keep it going. I read one post on another site to not even bother starting a forum unless you are getting 5,000 visitors a day. Make a point of making several posts yourself every day, and make sure people want to comment on them. You need to increase the odds that someone will want to reply. If your site is getting the 5k visitors a day, and 1 out of 250 want to reply to your post, and 1 out of 10 of those actually join your forum to post you might get 2 visitors to join and post. A month later might only be 60 new members, but if you continue to grow you could have better than 1,000 by the end of the year. The more members the more posts, the more post, the more likely someone will join and post!
Create interesting articles in your forum, make the search engines index them and when the user wants to view it. Force them to join. Hehe well there are tons of them., you just need to get the right people interested to join.
join www.theadminzone.com ...they offer a free post for members but you must meet certain criteria...they call Launch Team. http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=70