Forum Advertising

[Jazzy]

Do you think allowing other forums to advertise on your forum is a good idea?

I mean aren't you running the risk that you'll lose your own members to another forum?

Ever have another forum admin/member register, make the allotted posts it takes to advertise and then they only come back to 'bump' their forum?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of allowing forum advertising?

 

[Darth-Apple]

I personally allow it on mine. I'm not particularly worried about my members being funneled to another forum. I've allowed advertising on forums for years and haven't ever really had issues with that.

The main issue I run into is that it often encourages users to write a bunch of spam posts to reach the required postcount. It's not the advertising itself that bothers me, but I've had members leave my forums in the past because they were displeased with all of the spammy promotional posts all over the place. I want my forum to exist as its own community, and not as a landing place for advertisements from who knows where.

Since then, I'd put in stricter guidelines and have banned SEO related deals, affiliate marketing programs, etc... from being promoted. It seems to have worked well so far.

 

[Tyler]

I think its fine to allow people to advertise their forum. :O
And yeah I was one of those people at first who would try and get the post count just to bump my thread... but i realized i was bored just using my own forum so i decided to be active on other forums and now that i quit on my forum I have alot more time to post on these other forums like Off Topix!

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

I think its only fair to let people advertise here since so many forum owners let me advertise on their forums.

Of couse we've had our share of people taking advantage, which is why we have strict advertising rules like needing 25 posts to advertise and you can only bump once a week. So if someone does want to only use us for advertising, at least they won't be as much of a bother.

Not too worried about losing members because if they really want to leave Off Topix permanently, they'll leave regardless if we have an ad forum or not. On the flip side, if someone likes Off Topix, they'll stay regardless if we have an ad forum or not.