Should paid forum posting perhaps charge by the hour rather than post?

Because I've just been thinking, and that seems like it'd be a much more 'realistic' seeming way of buying forum posts. Why? Because in the real world (aka on forums without paid posting), members don't just join, make a few posts then leave for good, they usually end up being extremely active off the bat then slowly post less and less as they stick around more.

Maybe a service where the paid posters end up making about fifty topics and reply to everything immediately, then slow down afterwards would work better and seem more 'realistic'? Maybe even have an option to choose how active you want the paid posters to be per hour to mimic actual user behaviour?

It's not a service I'd ever use myself (I avoid paid posting due to it being a bit of waste of money and due to how fake the idea is), but I do imagine it'd be something a lot of people might like more than just 'pay for ten or twenty posts'.

What do you think about this?

 

The problem with trying to charge hourly is that it isn't easily trackable. There are programs that can be used to take periodic screenshots to prove what is being worked on at various points but then you run into whether or not you actually want someone posting an entire hour on your forum at a time, etc. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how to implement it.

 

I think paid forum posters should be paid like writers, and get paid for how many words they put into the posts/articles. This way forum owners can guarantee that they'll receive quality content in return. Unfortunately for paid posters there's a lot of people that are willing to work dirt cheap for posting on forums.

 

I would rather it by word, too, but then there has to be a cap. Otherwise, people will just ramble on and on with walls of text that don't make that much sense or have a lot of unnecessary content. They'll be doing it just to up their word count.

Unfortunately, there's no real good way of doing it because there's always a way to game the system....and always people willing to do crap work for the cheap pay.

 

You certainly have the option to restrict the amount of posts and threads started by such a paid poster each day. You can keep the limit at, say 5 or 10 posts, and you can also suggest that you need a minimum word count per post, like 25 words. They shall keep posting as long as you keep paying them.

 

I like johnthomas1433's suggestion. Limit the number of posts per day and also set a minimum word count. Then, if you like you could also rise the number por posts to users that write quality content. That will also be a motivation for them to keep writing and writing useful and thoughtful comments.

 

You can make it so forum owners will review the posts before payment, and if they're not happy with the content they can ask the user to modify the post.

 

I agree keep a limit at 5 or 10 a day and yes maby suggest that you need a minumum word count!!

 

I prefer pay per post since there are many kinds of posters. Those who make posts quickly but mostly those posts are low quality whereas posters who take more make longer posts with valuable information for the forum members. Therefore pay per hour would be a good choice in order to upkeep the quality. Anyhow, pay per hour poster wouldn't post so much unless there is a given milestone per hour.

 

It should be only pay per post and not by the hour,but also set rules and limits on how many posts they can make per day and the quality that they have to be. Honestly I would prefer quality over quantity and that way the forum itself looks much more neat like and that people actually are having fun being there not just for the money but for the conversation as well, most of the time a lot of the forum posters can not even speak proper English and so they use translators or something and that can also cause issues as some of the words do not make sense and then make it look bad in a way once again. I'm not sure if they have forums like this for other languages but maybe they do and they have a totally different system, anyways paid to post is better then being written like an article and paid per word or per hour.

 

I think it is better to pay someone by the number of posts they make since paying someone per hour would end up with the person not being so active, a couple of mouse clicks here and there and that's it.

 

But do you want someone who's ultra active and posts meaningless content to get there, or someone who spends a lot of time working on more indepth posts?

 

Pay for quality. Paying by the hour or by the word will get you nothing but a bill of goods.
Write me 5000 words or more that makes me want to publish it on my front page and submit it to newspapers and then we'll talk about money.
So few paid writers are worth paying.
Those who are can make more than I can afford to pay them elsewhere.

 

I think the amount paid per post should be of course determined by the quality. I think it merits some investigation when a poster creates content based on the forum, niche and general topic. It also speaks volume when the posts created by the writer have a distinctive tone that commands a beyond basic comprehension of the discussed topic. But I think there are quite a few forum posters whom deserve the current pay grades exhibited on may of the pay per post service providers. I think it's logical to pay anywhere between $0.25 - 2.00 per post.

 

Here's how I would do it if I paid for posting:
If the post gets X views I'll pay X per view.
If the post gets X replies I'll pay X per reply.
That means if you write crap that gets very few views and replies you aren't getting paid much.

 

The way you describe it reminds me of many revenue sharing sites or the concept utilized by Bubblews. They pay per view, comment, like or dislike. You think the payments should be structured the same way when it comes to forum posts? Posts should be informative with a strict adherence to the basic standards of English ( if that's the governing language of the forum). There are quite a few individuals whom produce content on forums that generate an astronomical amount of traffic due to the wealth of information provided but I feel that many of the newer forums with an assumption that purchasing thousands of forum posts will generate traffic long term. I find with many of the pay per post sites, some members will stay for the duration of the " active" status of the forum on the pay per post service dashboard, cashing out frequently then allowing their accounts to go inactive once the forum owner is unable to meet the financial demands of the posters. I think it's a good concept if the posters are truly into the topic presented by the forum but bad news if the content provided in posts are poor and irrelevant.

 

That's an interesting idea, but it has one snag...

If your forum is already fairly active, then near enough ANY content will get a ton of views and at least a few replies.

For example, someone posted an intro here and got something like 4800 views. That's a lot of cash for a fairly useless topic.

Edit: Also, by replies is a bit problematic, because there's one very simple way to get replies... controversy/drama. So in other words, the paid poster acts like a complete moron on purpose, says something deliberately controversial to the point of it being near suicidal (like, saying XenForo sucks on the official support forum), then watches the views and replies come rolling in. More drama + more money paid out = potentially bad idea.

 

Well, obviously it would have to be further qualified. I wouldn't pay for spiders or bots or spam accounts or hit and runs.
If the article is, say 5,000 words, then a member would have to remain on the page for at least ten minutes to read it.
Anything less isn't an actual view and doesn't get paid.
Any reply that doesn't actually reply to the points made in the post also wouldn't count.
Quality posts generate quality views and quality replies.