Can your forum survive without post exchanges?

It would be extremely hard for me to grow my forum without post exchanges, and I doubt my forum would ever get off the ground without doing any post exchanges.

Would you be able to grow your forum without post exchanges or paying for posts?

 

I think it would be rather difficult to do without some sort of boost somewhere. For example, even if you don't do any post exchanges, you could possibly make multiple accounts to make it look active instead, which is the same idea but a different method. You could also rely on friends to help you build it up in the beginning while you're marketing it.

I think it would be really difficult to do entirely by yourself, as one account, without any outside assistance at all, though.

 

Post exchanges are temporary crutches. No different than making 5 usersnames and talking with yourself.

You need to start finding members who will actually come and visit the forum and stay.

Now, I have done post exchanges before, however am not active on any of those sites.

 

Agreed. No forum can ever be fully sustained by paid posters or post exchangers only. Once there's no more money or no more time to exchange posts, your forum will die.

Getting active members is no easy task, but advertising, creating new threads, creating contests, etc. increase the chances of a member becoming active.

 

I think it can help to get some starting content and therefore it would be hard to go about launching sites without them unless you had people willing to help you out or a different incentive to join than content. It can be done, it is just harder.

 

I remember never using a post exchange on my site. I may try it now to restart it, but you shouldn't need it per-say.

 

I use paid posting for new boards or when a forum is having a bit of a dry spell. But I wouldn't try and sustain a forum using such practices. Effective seo and organic traffic should be any forum owners ideal method.

 

Depends. I started off quick with great promotional strategies. Pulled an average of 40 posts a day before post exchanges, moved to XenForo and went down to about 5 per day, I did a few post exchanges for a few days and those got the forum back up and rolling, we're now at an average of 35 posts per day again.

 

I don't believe in post exchanges or paying for post. I believe they are temporary fixes. Although I have never tried it. I believe once your post exchanges are gone, they are just dead accounts.

 

I believe it can as long as you have some friends talking back and forth with you. I do post exchanges from time to time on my forums to help with the activity flow and drive a few new members. I think once you get established, you don't have to do them as much. But then again, its always nice to have more content on your forums and post exchanges help with that. As long, as you have standards as to the quality of the posts that you're exchanging.

 

When the forum is first made, then yes - the content will help you get seen by search engines.

Because I don't really have any money for that type of thing, I would normally just make multiple accounts and talk to myself (it's fun, you should do it sometime). Or I get friends/acquaintances to make accounts and posts.

 

This is the only site I've ever used a post exchange and it was more for the money then anything with my postloop referrals. If I remember and we're having a slow weekend I enable it to collect 10 or 15 post then let it run out. I don't mind them but it comes to a point when your competitors are running them too and you see the same users making similar post on other sites when it really becomes useless in my opinion.

 

I never used any post exchanges or paid posting.

I started my community after becoming a partially disgruntled member of my competitors. I said to myself I can do this better. I started the forum and recruited members I had gotten to know over the years from the other sites who were like minded, had a good reputation and that was the number one thing to make my site grow.

 

That's exactly why I like doing them on a new forum. You can always ask the post exchangers questions and make them reply to more topics. I also think its a good idea to start off a few topics of your own, then invite people to do post exchanges with you. I remember when PostLoop was just an idea, but now people can do posts on other forums and build links with ease.

 

To answer your question: no. However you yourself as an owner of a website have a big part to play depending on how succesful your website can get. Its up to you to grow it, not only the members.

 

At the beginning is super important because that's where you win a space on the internet, but then the content is really good and users will get good people really interested in your forum.

 

Yes it can survive without them, because I didn't use post exchanges to begin with.

 

I've never had to use post exchanges. I think it's because I had an active blogsite for a couple of years before connecting a forum to it. So, there was pretty much a pre-existing community ready to move into the forums.

 

Hey all,... are there other commercial services like Postloop, or is that pretty much it?