Staring a Paid Forum... IMPORTANT Question

Launch the forum to a list to you start with some momentum.

Hi Alex, if its really important to you and you want to "speed things up" you can easily pay people to boost your forum posts (such as forumbooster.net)

I must add though, that I have found their customer service to be a bit poor (I paid for 300 posts but then halfway through they sent me an email telling me the "boost" was completed... I have had to contact them a number of times to tell them to finish the job.. which they are now doing)

So there are companies that boost your forum, but be aware that things dont always go as smoothly as you might want them to be.

My mate has run a successful paid forum for 10 years now. The way he started was to attract people to a free forum first, then he offered a free membership to the most active posters to a paid side of the forum. He also offered a number of competitions and discounts to the first members.

Rich

For membership sites with forums, you can seed the membership/forums with charter members. Charter members get a fat (and permanent) discount (like, 50% or more) to get in on the ground floor of something new. For that discount, they are guinea pigs and are expected to provide feedback to get things into shape for the launch.

And even before you have paying charter members, you can have some folks that you know personally help you seed some topics.

Your charter members will give you valuable information to help shape the content and the launch, all the while populating the forum with content so it's not a ghost town upon launch.

Havent read through the rest of the responses but if this has already been said then sorry.

But first off defiantly do not use any sort of bots to make posts i certainly would be more upset if all the post were by bots then if i was the first member.

But if you have a list offer a 1 month membership to your list or a certain group of people for 1 dollar for lets say a week if by the end of that week they have 25+ posts they can stay as a member till the end of the month for only a dollar. After that prices go back up to a dollar.

So you get paid you get 25 plus post per member you give this deal to as well possibly some testimonials.

Just an idea

- Eric

This post as well applies

For membership sites with forums, you can seed the membership/forums with charter members. Charter members get a fat (and permanent) discount (like, 50% or more) to get in on the ground floor of something new. For that discount, they are guinea pigs and are expected to provide feedback to get things into shape for the launch.

And even before you have paying charter members, you can have some folks that you know personally help you seed some topics.

Your charter members will give you valuable information to help shape the content and the launch, all the while populating the forum with content so it's not a ghost town upon launch.

Hey Alex,

Eric is right... don't go that route... bot posts/hired posts are so easy to spot a mile away.

Always think quality first.

Your best bet in my opinion is to launch the forum to the public first somehow... there are many creative ways you can go about this... 'Join now for free before it's a paid membership' is always a sure fire way to get tons of people to join...

- Jared