Get Paid for Forum Posting

This week I'm going to tackle the subject of different ways of getting paid to write. This week I'll write about a different way to earn money through your writing skills.
Today's subject is forum posting.

When I first started my delve into working at home, I got my first well paid gig as a forum poster. I helped jump start new communities by posting forum messages and keeping conversations going. It was a fun job and I was well paid for it. It worked so well that a company who owns several forums hired me to manage five forums for them. For six months I worked about 12-25 hours a week managing, moderating and running a forum. I paid some paid posters, ran contests and tried to up the traffic while keeping the tone on point and managing spam and flaming. If you are an online social butterfly, forum posting might be for you.

My first forum posting job was through odesk.com who is a virtual staffing agency. I have also seen many forum posting jobs and agencies listed on webmaster forums like www.sitepoint.com and http://forums.digitalpoint.com. Forums can also be a great way to win prizes in posting contests and seo contests.

Tips to be a great paid poster:

-Figure out what the focus of the site is. If it's a technical forum, brush up on your tech skills. If it's a forum about saltwater aquariums make sure you spend a little time researching the subject so you'll be able to write interesting posts
-Avoid starting controversial discussions that could incite flaming among members
-Paid forum posting jobs are not to be used to do your own self promotion. Most webmasters will request that paid posters refrain from using signature links, etc.
- Start new threads with open ended questions in them to get people responding.

Forum posting can be a full-time, part-time or supplement your income between other gigs kind of job.