People need to remember when buying a package from a service. That they are a temporary thing. A supplement. By no means are they to be permanant. I find in my experience that you a buy a poster thats all. A few will come back if the forum is interesting or will pertain to what they are working on in the web development community. And yes not all are created equally. I usually find a few things good/bad about a forums in my experience: 1. The forum is brand new. Packages should be a starter package in this case. On top of buying a forum when you are new. What other things are you doing to bring in users? Are you advertising your site. Are you doing affiliate links/exchanges? All the posters are doing is being fillers so your forum does not look empty. 2. Many forum owners do not post enough in their forum. They do not participate. The owner should be in their every day. I find more than 60% of owners are not active in their own communities 3. The forum is old and needs a little spice. Sometimes to many regular users get stuck on one thread repeating the same thing. This is where paid posters come in. Hopefully say something new and draw users out of a rut. I could say a ton of things about paid posting services. But I figured I better stop here. A forum owner needs to remember that services are a temporary or a supplement thats all. You bought users thats all they will be unless your information is pertinant in their personal or work life.
I thing paid posting is working if they spend good and high quality posts on your forums.But main problem is when your job completed your forum become empty once agian no more good posting there.
I've had pretty poor experiences with paid posting. I had one person who was ok but it was still pretty obvious that he wasn't into the hobby of discussion. Its probably due to the fact that my topic is a very strong niche (how much do you know about exotic pets? hehe) so it can be hard to get into without a fair bit of research. For that reason, whenever I take on a posting job I make sure I can do with without research, that way I can write naturally.
Well on my forums I created 3 other members but I'll have to up the ante. It takes time...everything does.
I can't say that Paid Posting is the only best way to kick start your forum but it is WORTH IT. It is ofcource not worth if you are hiring an unprofessional stupid posters or companies. When you actually buy Paid Posting, you are not only buying the activity and posts that shall be spread along all over the forum but also the HIGH QUALITY CONTENT. Good Writers and worthful companies know what is a Paid Post and their posts shall contain useful materials and they usually will think, research and then post. Every Quality Posts will help you a lot with SEO and will get you lots of traffic from SE, provided you know some SEO work, etc. Making Fake Accounts and Posting will make you sound similar and you might not have so much time to sit down and make posts yourself researching or you might land up making small posts and no help from SE since they will not be the quality posts that actually helps. I would again say that Paid Posting does help, but may not be the only best option of forum promotion. Good luck everyone
Just started a new forum , and although I am not against paid posting I can't see the point? I agree the administrator/owner needs to get involved though.