What Do You Think About PM Advertising?
Private message advertising is a thing most administrators deem as bad, but to what extent? Would giving the administrator of a forum a link to your own forum be considered PM advertisement? Is it harmful or “bad” to do something like this? Is PM advertising all around bad, or is there a good side to it? I think PM advertising is an interesting topic to talk about, because I think different people have a different idea of what it really means to be advertising through private messages on forums. I think people advertise all the time, but maybe not with the intention of “PM advertising.” So what do you think?
Questions to Answer in the Comments:
1) What do you classify PM advertising as?
2) What do you personally do in circumstances where PM advertisement has occurred on your forum?
3) Have you ever advertised your forum or website through private messages? How?
Feel free to leave your response.
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February 23rd, 2011 at 11:27 am
It’s a risky move.
Specifically, it’s against the rules of almost all forums and I don’t believe I want risk such a move and end up banned.
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February 23rd, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Most, if not all the forums Ive joined, have specific rules against advertising via PM (aka spamming).
I feel this way as well, unless the member directly inquired about a service.
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February 23rd, 2011 at 7:23 pm
So in your definition, it is spamming something via PM to multiple members?
The thing about PM advertisement is that I think there is a rather grey line at times. For example, if I were to send you a PM that said “Hey man, I know you’re a great administrator and I wanted to know what you thought on this subject on my blog. [Link]”
Isn’t that technically advertisement through PM? But is it really that harmful to do something like that?
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February 24th, 2011 at 12:39 am
I think that is part of the grey area you mentioned. I think what I may have been referring to, is for example, if I were to log onto another motorcycle forum and try to advertise mine .. conflict of interest, or, if I rode into a group and gave them my groups business cards – might leave with a black eye!
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February 24th, 2011 at 6:52 pm
Why isn’t it called PM spam advertisement then? Heh.
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February 23rd, 2011 at 9:12 pm
Only sites I’ve ever been to that have a rule against it are really huge sites and they are referring to mass pm’s. Truth is any admin who comes to your site is looking for members. Keeping it to pm’s is better than them putting it on the board.
for the most part I won’t even post at a site that won’t let me advertise with a sig banner.
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February 23rd, 2011 at 9:24 pm
That’s a reasonable thing to do I think (talking about sig banner). I mean, if forums are all about incentive, then this is a rather big one for some people.
It’s a give and take world: you give them posts, they allow you to post your sig and therefore “take” some traffic to your forum.
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