If you wanted to make your Forum a Pay to Post one...

Discussion in 'SEO, Traffic and Revenue' started by SimplySidy, Jun 14, 2013.

  1. SimplySidy

    SimplySidy Website Consultant, Developer and Strategist

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    Hi friends,

    I was wondering if there were any thoughts on Pay To Post kind of forums. I havent seen many though but definitely have been recommended to a few where I found that the owners of the Forums are paying to the members.

    The payments on these forums are basically either on the Pay to Earn kind of where you are paid per post that you participate OR on the basis of the Karma or ratings and rankings.

    Now what I want to discuss here is the fact that - in case you wish to make your forum paid to participate, what options would you go for and also have you ever researched on these lines and found some helpful plugins (of course based on what app your forum is build upon).
     
  2. CM30

    CM30 Regular Member

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    Err, are you talking about forums where you need to pay to be able to contribute or forums where you get paid for contributing? Because there's a pretty big difference.

    If you want the latter, then something like adsense revenue sharing would work. For the former, something like member subscriptions and a plugin to force people to buy a subscription to join the forum.
     
  3. ProSportsForums

    ProSportsForums Regular Member

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    I think paying people to post on your forum is also known as blackhat seo ...

    But, for the sake of this thread, if I were going to pay anyone to post on my forums they would have to be writing original article content that generates unique pageviews ... a lot of them. Otherwise, it's a waste of money. I would never pay anyone to pretend to know what they are talking about in the forum threads. It's too obvious when they don't.
     
  4. SimplySidy

    SimplySidy Website Consultant, Developer and Strategist

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    I was referring to sites or forums that pay their members some cents per response or per discussion or even based on some formulae using their ratings, rankings etc. But now that you mention the Pay to join, well, there are forums which have restricted sections which only paying members get access to.

    You refer the adsense revenue sharing. In simple words, would it mean - dividing the revenues earned by those adverts (maybe from Google or otherwise) - amongst the members? Yes, this might be a way to pay(or earn as management of forum) - as I dont see too many ways to earn from forums - if I keep the forum as a mere forum.
     
  5. SimplySidy

    SimplySidy Website Consultant, Developer and Strategist

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    Well, to be honest, I had no idea if the pay to post thing could be blackhat seo and I still do have doubts because if it was the thing, why would a couple of forums and even discussion boards do that kind of thing. I was a member of a big site which runs even after 7 years - and it was a couple of months back that they stopped payouts.

    I agree, that if one has to pay out to the posters, the management has to be stringent and clear defined in their thoughts, definitions of what is allowed and what is not and also how they would be handling the similar content.
     

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