Forum posting jobs

There's a vast network of forum posters roaming the internet. And there are companies who hire these forum posters. Job description? Go to a specific forum, make a specific number of posts and replies related to the forum topic, and get paid for it. Qualifications? None. Payment? 15 to 30 cents per post. Listed below are companies who offer forum owners paid posting services and forum posting jobs to freelancers.

TheForumFairy - Pays 15 cents per post. Reliable and always pays on time. Payment by paypal.
PaidPosting - Pays 12 to 14 cents per post. Has a very nice automated system of keeping track of your earnings. Payment by paypal whenever you reach $2.
ForumPosters - Forum for posting project request by forum owners and responses by posters and paid posting service providers. In short, a paid forum posting marketplace.
PaidPostingReviews - There's about 40-50 companies doing this, as of now. I can't possibly list all of them here. However, this site has a nice list of some of these companies.

A few questions. Why would a forum owner pay people to post on his forum? Because it makes new visitors to the forum think that there's actually some life in the forum, and entices them to join and make a few posts themselves. It increases the value of the forum to the search engines.

Is this ethically correct? Before I started getting paid myself as a forum poster, I would have said no. In fact, a forum for which I was a mod had a few hired forum posters who posted nothing but crap. For instance "I agree". "You're right". "I too, wanted to do the same". It's posts like these that turn off regular visitors and make business even worse for forum owners. What needs to be done, for the paid forum posting industry to survive, is to weed out all the grabage posters. Make sure only posters who actally know something about the subject, or at the very least, will do some research to make sure what they're posting is not total crap, are hired. There is always the danger that if real members of your forum find out you have paid posters, the end result will the exact opposite of what you intended.

Lemme tell you something, though. In the course of my forum posting gigs, not only have I learned a lot of valuable things about a wide range of topics, but I have also got to know a few of the forum owners personally. These are all good, highly qualified and intelligent people. Sometimes, I feel really sorry when I see such eminent and successful technocrats desperate to see some activity on their forums. And it breaks my heart when they mail me after my paid stint on their forum is over, asking why I'm not active anymore. But it's a real world, and the dollar is boss. On to the next forum...