Paid posting?

[networkingguy347]

Forgive me if I'm a bit shortsighted, but is there paid posting going on in this forum? There seems to be a lot of thoughtless I agree posts on some of the posts. ...not that paid posting is bad, you have to start somehow. If there is you may wish to ask the posters to put some more thought into it, even if you don't get as many postings out of them.

...just asking.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi networkingguy347,


Welcome to 5 Star. Not sure what you mean about paid posting.
You mean are we paying people to post?

"not that paid posting is bad, you have to start somehow"

No way! If we were (and we wouldn't) it would only be for quality posts.
We are 3 years old and way past the start up point where some forums would pay for posts,
but we have never paid for posts. We grew the forum organically with good content.

What you may be seeing is - we just got hit with a rash of members that are posting one-liners, probably for sig views. We can't ban people without evidence of wrong doing so we are investigating some things with some members.

[Larwee]

No there is no paid posting going on with these forums. No paid posting services and no phony members just to post to make it look like a lot is going on. Everything you see is for real.

We are a very well established 3 year old forum.

There are a lot of thoughtful and very helpful comments being made and I will direct you to some of them.

There are spammers and self promoters who want to do a lot of foolish posting. We quickly remove those before most people see them.

There are people who are new without to much to say, so you might see some of that.

There are some people who post just trying to give their signature exposure or for some other self-serving reason. We usually get rid of those.

Our members often praise us for the good job we do of keeping these forums in order without a lot of junk that you find in many other forums.

Many of the self-promoters who want to do every trick they can think of to try to get their self-serving message out often complain because we don't let them do what they want to do.

If you have questions about any particular posts or members please let me know about them in private.

Take a look at the posts in our Hall of Fame thread Hall of Fame - Best Words of Wisdom from 5 Star Members

Look at the sticky threads in our General Topics Affiliate Forum http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5s...filiate-forum/

See the sticky threads in our Newbie Affiliate Forum http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5s...filiate-forum/

Those are just a few examples of some of the quality posts you will find here.

You are the first person who has ever mentioned anything about possibly paid posting here.

If you look around at the thousands of posts here you will find there is a lot of good quality information and some members who put a lot of time and thought into what they post.

There might be some that aren't of the highest quality but if they haven't violated any rules, we must allow them to post.

I should add that there are times when it is obvious that people are posting just to be posting silly one-line posts or even a couple of words. They might make several of those. In those cases the posts have been removed and the members were contacted and told not to make those types of posts. So we don't allow members to get carried away with that type of posting.

Some people who might make a brief thank you post are members who do a lot of posting and most of it is quality. In that "thank you" they were being sincere and there is nothing wrong with that.

Some of the top industry people are members here and they also do some posting.

People often suggest that we should have a membership drive contest or a contest to see who can make the most post. We don't do those things because we don't want people getting people to join in order for them to win a contest because those members wouldn't be the type of members we want. We want members who join for the right reasons and not members who are recruited to help people win a contest.

We also don't want people posting to see who can make the most posts because many of those will be nothing more than junk post. We aren't interested in that. We are interested in as much quality as possible and having people post just to be posting isn't going to lead to quality.

Once you have taken a good look at all that is here you will see there is a lot of quality posting being done by our members.

[Niche]

Have been using and participating in this forum for a while now and although I can see where you are coming from, I think people agreeing with other peoples' comments is actually quite valid.

If someone shares some information and some other webmaster agrees with the information shared, he or she may feel compelled to air that view. It in some ways adds validity to the original comments posted.

Yes there are people who are just trying to get a signature [I agree with you Linda ] but there are also a lot of really useful comments that I have benefited greatly from in this forum

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Niche!

I think he's probably seeing a few posts like:

"You make point gud. Interest in nice article you put."

I just thought of a new rule I'm going to talk to Larry about.
because the thing is, like Niche said - the majority of our regular loyal members, if they made a short post saying "thanks for the tip, I've been looking for this type of info." Or even just 'thanks, great info" - its totally genuine and just a short comment which is fine.

We've been getting hit by a ring or numerous rings of posters that are brand new members with no interest in affiliate marketing and nothing to offer anyone here. They are posting for a variety of nefarious reasons. We can't ban someone for just doing a short post, so sometimes we have to do more research to get enough evidence to ban someone.

Then after we get the evidence to ban them we have to find time to go back and delete all their worthless posts, which is HARD when you are getting hit by another whole group of scammers pulling new stuff on the forum.

You guys wouldn’t even believe how much time we spend trying to kill bad posts before you guys see them and trying to ban members that are pulling all kinds of crazy stuff.

So for anyone that wonders why we are a little strict around here sometimes - well you just wouldn't even believe the stuff we deal with from spammers, scammers, cookie droppers and outright fraudsters.

[Linda Buquet]

Since this post is not affiliate affiliate marketing, but about how the forum is run, I'm moving it out of the affiliate forum and down into the 5 Star forum issues part of the forum.

networkingguy347 Thanks for bringing it up!

1st impressions count and I had no idea anyone would think
that's what was going on so very good feedback for us to know!

[jcorkern]

I had never looked at it like that, But i could see where it could look that way based on personal preception. I know that I am here to try to lessen the learning curve for the beginners that come here. You see, there is so much misinformation on the web about marketing, webdesign, seo, PPC , loads of issues with the traps, scams, what works and what dosen't.

Most of the senior members have found a home here because we have already made it to financial independence from the web. That may not be 5 million a year, but that is also in the eyes of the beholder.

The ones that are here may have just replaced their outside jobs income and have more time now to spend with family and friends, and some a lot more. But the spirit of this forum is that it is from people who have and ARE still walking down this ever learning road of internet marketing, and understanding that it is the last frontier where the average man/woman can make his/her mark and really do it big if that is their choice.

We know what it's like to buy that 50 dollar ebook, that 300 dollar cd set, or seminars that cost thousands.

I can honestly say that my intentions are to help people avoid all of the bad info and get a solid business running online, And I believe that I speak for a larger portion of the people of this forum when I say that this is one of the few places that really wants to hear the success stories. There is a great benefit to sharing and learning as a "Group" so to speak.

I have never quoted any religious references before, and I try to stay away from it here as to not offend anyone, but there is a verse in the bible that says that there is wisdom in the council of many.

So why dont you look around and take a good hard look and see if they really do look like commercial post, you may be suprised by what you find if you digg deep enough.

There are some people who really are trying to make a difference, to help each other, and to help, collectively the success of everyone that wants to make their profession online and even the ones who want to do it as a sideline.

Not really an edit, but an add on: There are several professionals here on this forum. One really big Name as far as I am concerned. I will not mention names, but someone I highly respect, and this person has put some great info on this forum for everyone, but there are many other experts also, just about every catagory you can go into, there are experts there to help.

fitnfree, marketing mama, Edwin, RobTID, and many others, some specialize in certain areas, SEO, web 2.0, programming, design, copyrighters, Jeeze, There is pretty much an entire internet marketing crew here for anyones free use, and they all do it to help everyone, for the benefit of everyone.

Give us a try, ask what you will, I am sure someone will try to help you no matter what the problem

Hope this helps, Jim