Can You Make Money Paid Forum Posting?

Make Money / Forum Posting Image Credit

Paid Posting can be a very good way to make money online. Everyday people ask how they can make money online. I have done well with paid posting and you can too. Here is my story. I began paid forum posting in 2007. I'd heard a fellow member of the workplacelikehome.com forum mention that they got paid to post in forums. I sent her a private message asking how she got into paid posting. She responded that she knew a forum owner that was looking for more posters. She gave me his email address and my first paid posting gig began.

He would send payments to my Paypal account and I would complete enough posts to earn the amount paid. Five dollars, would require 20 posts. That forum had several members and the forum owner was simply trying to boost threads and traffic.

When that job ended, I began looking online for paid posting gigs. I signed up for at least 50 sites online that claimed to pay posters. Some require you to make posts to show your work before they hire you. Many of these sites have a reputation for failing to respond, as I learned through experience and online research.

Of the many sites I joined, I found 4 that actually had work and paid me for my work. Throughout 2008, I worked for forumbooster.net, postingdirect.com, paidpostingtools.com, and flamewired.com. Of those websites, forumbooster.net is still functional. Paid Posting Tools has moved to Inbox.com and the writer application is available here. Inbox.com is by far the most lucrative paid forum posting website online. I highly recommend it.

As a paid poster you will:

1. Sign up with a forum - Create a login and password, then verify your email account.
2. Read what is going on in the forum - The forums are rarely populated at all. The posts you will be creating and responding to belong to fellow paid posters. Many of their user names and avatars will become familiar to you and you will speak to the same paid posters on all forums. This is so common, that on the rare occasion that an internet user pops in and posts, it surprises all the paid posters.
3. Begin Posting - Experienced posters often make controversial posts hoping to drive in traffic and spark conversation. If you are not familiar with the general forum topic, you will need to do research online.

Pay averages anywhere from 15 cents to 30 cents a post. You will not get rich by paid forum posting. I did it for fun, without rushing, and averaged 6 posts an hour. That is approximately $1.25 per hour. If you are a new writer, it would provide experience. That experience could be used on a resume or at a website to secure clients, such as Odesk.com. My first client that I mentioned above paid quite well at 25 cents per post.

A word of warning for anyone who is considering paid posting to backlink their online writing, as a paid poster, you will be strongly discouraged from placing links in your signature! If you backlink, it may cost you your posting job.

Heather Schulte currently enjoys writing for Suite101, Bright Hub, and Squidoo. She also blogs about working from home as a freelance writer at heatherstelecommute.blogspot.com.