Tony's Thing on the Web

I was browsing a forum a few days ago when I came across something I had not personally seen before. Maybe that’s because I don’t get around forums as often as I should.

I like to see what problems people are having and what questions they ask on forums and sometimes I post a reply that will hopefully help someone.

However, after what I saw yesterday I have to question whether I could be wasting my time giving away answers to forum postings. You see what I came across were a lot of requests for forum posters.

At first I thought they were looking for posters that you hang on your wall, but no they were looking for posters – people. These “posters” would be paid to pose and answers questions on the hirers own forum and to keep forum threads going for as long as possible.

Had I stumbled across a little known way to make money online ?
After all if I was answering forum posts anyway, why not get paid for doing it. But some of these hirer’s were hard task masters, requiring you post at least 100 times a week.

Now there’s no way I could keep up 100 posts a week and still write the intelligent considered replies that I like to think I do on forums.

But then Oh! My hopes of making loads of cash were dashed when I discovered to my horror I would earn just 10cents ($0.1) for every post.

Now that may be good money in some parts of the world but where I live that wouldn’t buy you much of anything.

But what really got me thinking was how many questions have I answered in the past, come from paid forum posters who are not interested in the reply anyway ?

And why would someone pay to have postings on their own forum or someone else’s ? Is this some form of desperate self-promotion or a secret new way that all online marketers should be using that I didn’t know about

It will make me think twice about posting replies on Forums in the future.

Tony Simpson
web site optimisation
Making Your Website Work for You

Copyright Tony Simpson - Webpageaddons.com | Posted at 01:33 PM | web page link

That’s what I’m forced to conclude after too many experiences that tell me most people don’t value what they get for free.

I recently launched a new membership site called Member’s Exchange the aim of which is to form a small group of 50 webmasters who want to co-operate to help each improve their web businesses and succeed on the Web.

Whilst it’s a paid membership, members can also pay in kind, by what they give back to other members.

Before I launched the paid membership I had an equally small group I had formed to help for free with their web design and promotion issues.

What I was forced to conclude from this group was that the majority of them did not seem to value what they got for free.

Regrettably it was not my first experience in reaching such a conclusion as I have tried to help many other people for free.

I think it’s a sad reflection on how cynical and mistrusting people have become on the web. The worst group seem to be webmasters themselves who are constantly bombarded with products and solutions offering them the success they so desperately want but continues to elude them.

When someone presents a genuine offer of help and support, their defensive radar is such that it prevents them from being open to the idea that perhaps the offer could be genuine.

Have we all become so cynical that if something genuine was presented to us we would not recognise it if it smacked us between the eyes, or do we refuse to accept that there can ever be anything genuine on the web.

It’s right to have a healthy scepticism about all these instant solutions, easy push button schemes and how to make $60,000 in one month sitting in your underpants claims.

And I’m just as cynical and sceptical as anyone else who has spent 5 years on the web. But I would never want to get to the stage of being like some people who like deer in a car’s headlights are frozen to the spot.

They seemed numbed by repeated bad experiences from ever taking anymore risks or seizing a genuine no risk opportunity of help and support.

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Tony Simpson
website optimization services
Making Your Website Work For You

Copyright Tony Simpson - Webpageaddons.com | Posted at 11:12 AM | web page link