paid to post?

Why are there so many people paying others to post on a forum? how does this help their traffic?

it doesnt help traffic it helps build a community... which helps repeat traffic in hte long run

the community is just temp because it paid for

No, it will persuade lurkers to post because it looks busy. No one is going to post if all they can see are empty forums; they need something to make them join in. This will make more members, and eventually there won't be a need to pay for posts. Get me? :)

If you went to look for a forum though, and found one with no posts, would you bother joining and posting? Most likely not as you would think there is no one else there posting, so no one would reply. In other words, a forum needs some amount of regular posting to attract and retain users.

Not only that, a forum gives you contstantly changing content which the SE's love and it gives you more pages to be indexed and possibly found via the SE's so more traffic as well in the long run.

Mike hit the nail right on the head. I am doing an experiment with that theory without PAYING mind you and its true. Soon as I got posters things EXPLODED on my new site.

The easiest way for a lurker to turn into a poster is to reply to an existing thread.

Without an existing thread you to reply to they won't post.

Without members you won't get any threads for people to reply to.

Paying for posts is a viable way to get over this first hurdle.

In fact I'm right now working on a review on pay to post companies.

My new forum has really helped one of my sites out too. Before I was looking and asking people for links and other stuff, now its the other way around.

I should add, I believe forums make up the core of what the internet is today. In the old days there was usenet, but lack of moderation, spam, and simply outdated technology haas left that area of the net in the dust.

Most internet users don't actively use forums right now -- they should.