Should You Pay for Posts? Forum Posting Services Reviewed
Lately there has been an increase in people willing to post on your forum for a price. I believe this trend started with post exchanges, and not surprisingly it's a small step to go from bartering an exchange to just paying for posts. I've seen individuals marketing themselves as a poster, I've seen forum owners run contests for the best poster, and I've seen many new companies launch that offer forum posting services.
Now, there are obvious pros and cons to using forum posting services. Let me start off by saying that I'm in favor of them for use with a new site, and I feel this way for one main reason: that the first 1000 posts of a forum are the hardest to get and paying someone for them is a small price to pay in the long run. Opponents of this practice claim that this makes a fake community with no spirit, I disagree with that statement. I think this practice makes no community, fake real or otherwise. The posters will usually only post until their assignment is done, then they're gone. That is not a community, nor is it supposed to be. There is also the worry of hiring poor English speakers and or people who post copyrighted information, but I think those problems aren't very likely (I certainly didn't have them).
The most likely way for someone to join a forum is for them to see a topic that they wish to reply to. You cannot get people to join your forum in this way if you have no topics to reply to. So I see forum posting services simply as ways to create those topics. The goal is not to create a community with paid posters themselves, but rather use paid posters to plant the initial content "seed" and then let it grow naturally, just at a (hopefully) accelerated pace.
You can also pay these services to beef up an existing community, and that is not something I recommend. I've heard of at least one person that did this and had it backfire when the real community members were annoyed by all the new people posting less than useful posts. That makes sense to me as well, communities are like small towns, they don't like outsiders, especially outsiders that trash the place and then leave. That is not to say that paid posters do not provide good quality posts, its just that their posting style might not be the norm for a forum, and also the sudden burst of activity can possibly be seen as intimidating to members used to a more easy going forum.
So, if you've decided to pay for posts you basically have three ways you can go about doing it. You can post on a forum a job offer for forum posters and then you'll need to manage and pay each individual poster, this method is probably the cheapest, or nearly so. You could run a contest where only the top few posters get paid, this method is a little simpler as you do not need to pay many people, but in my opinion this method will also get you the lowest quality of posts. The final method is what I did, that is hire a forum posting service. You pay one person and they handle all the rest.
I happened to have two brand new forums, Savvy Shopping and 4 Laser Hair Removal. I thought having the companies post on both would be a good way to test the range of their writers, as Savvy Shopping would be a relatively easy forum to post on, and 4 Laser Hair Removal is certainly hard.
I ended up contacting many companies but only ended up reviewing two, and they did know they were being reviewed so keep that in mind.
Review of Inb0x.com
Inb0x.com was impressively quick in getting back to me after I had initially emailed them. During the course of writing this article I ended up emailing practically every forum posting service on the Internet and these guys got back to me faster than anyone else. They also started rather quickly and were done rather quickly.
Their mid-range package, which I requested, is $65.99 for 300 posts, 50 threads, by 5-6 authors. On Savvy Shopping they actually delivered 354 posts, 134 of which were in general chat areas. On 4 Laser Hair Removal they delivered 320 posts, 111 of which were in general chat. One of their posters asked me if I would allow forum games, such as "person above me." I envisioned my 300 posts being all in general chat and so told her I'd rather she wouldn't. Still though, they did post more in general chat than the other company I hired. To be fair, I didn't request that they not post there (to either company), I knew I was going to include the proportion in my review so I wanted to see what they would do on their own. Most of their posters seemed to be British, which was suprising, I was expecting people who barely knew English such as Chinese or Indians.
Inb0x.com also offers 75 posts for $22.99 and 700 posts for $145.99, which is your best deal, though just barely.
Review of Post on My Forum
PostOnMyForum.com got back to me relatively quickly, but they were not able to start work for awhile. The owner said that he was backlogged on customers and simply did not have enough employees, he also thought the subject matter of my forums might be too hard, in the end though it wasn't. Once the posters started they were done relatively quickly, in about two weeks. Also, two posters were replaced by the company for low activity and the posts they had done thus far were considered freebies.
PostOnMyForum.com's mid-range package is $95 for 300 posts, 60 new threads, and 4-6 posters. On Savvy Shopping they delivered 303 posts, 57 of which were in general chat. On 4 Laser Hair Removal they delivered 311 posts, 80 of which were in general chat. One thing they did that was different was that they would have users use multiple usernames, so really around 10 different usernames posted on my forums. This feature has its pros and cons. Having more unique posters, at least visibly, does make the forum seem busier. However I found that this resulted in a lot of "me too" posts where an author would talk to themselves and really not say anything important, just agree with the original post with 3 or 4 usernames. Had the posters actually discussed and disagreed with themselves I may have found this more useful, but simple assenting posts I don't think add that much and so I think I have to recommend not allowing users to post with multiple accounts.
Most of PostOnMyForum.com's posters were from the US (so again, no Chinese or ESL people), though they seemed young, which was to be expected. They also offer 100 posts for $35 and 1000 posts for $285.
In Conclusion
Between the two its hard to pick one on quality. I did not like PostOnMyForum's policy of multiple usernames for each individual poster. On the other hand Inb0x's writers seemed to gravitate more to the ease of posting in general chat. Both also posted more in general chat on the harder topic forum. Price wise and speed wise Inb0x.com wins, so if I had to choose to use one again I would probably choose them. They're both good companies though, and quite frankly you never know who is going to have the lighter schedule when you want to place your order so you might as well ask both.
Overall I was pleased with the performance of both companies and will definitely be hiring a forum posting service next time I launch a new forum.
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