Functionality for Members to promote their Threads.
 

I'm surprised after how long vBulletin has been around, there there's still no functionality to let users promote/advertise their content, either via modifications or built-in.

This is kind of disappointing because in almost all forums out there, revenue can be earned by allowing members to promote their content for profit.

Think about it...

Pay to stick a thread for xx days

Pay to bump a thread to the top of a forum

Pay to advertise a thread in the forum sidebar

Pay to advertise at all...

I'd really love to see some modifications created, free or paid, that will allow us vb forum owners to earn revenue by offering advertising options for our members.

In all reality, vbulletin has NEVER had the functionality to allow our users to advertise, only functionality for us to advertise ourselves.

I think if vbulletin and/or a couple programmers really looked at this, making it possible to let forum members pay to advertise or promote the content they create on our forums, we would all as webmasters be making more money, and as would our members.

The only mod I've ever seen that comes close was a pay per bump add-on but that was only for the 3.x series, but the only payment option there was always Paypal. vbulletin has API capabilities built in for multiple processors, like 2 checkout.

It would be great to have some kind of user-engaged method of advertising that would somehow work seamlessly with the paid subscriptions (payments) system vbulletin already has.

Maybe vbulletin could add some hooks into the vbulletin code for things like, sale initiated, checkout in progress, sale complete, sale failed, sale refunded, sale renewed, etc etc.

I just figured I'd try and spark up a discussion about it and see what we can come up with as a group for a solution to this.

Nobody has any interest in this?

You can do all of that using PayPal and vB, it's just not automated. E.g. you can post a topic on your forum offering to let users pay to stick a thread. Then ask members or guests to send the payment via PayPal and let you know the link to the thread they want stuck. What additional functionality would you need from VB to accomplish this?

It's been done in forums like digitalpoint.com though I believe those were custom modifications.

Well of coarse it can be done manually, that's besides the point of this thread.

when you've got hundreds of thousands of visits a month and hundreds or thousands of active, posting members at any given time this just simply isn't feasible.

functionality to allow members to promote their content on the forum, in an automated fashion.

For example, a button that says 'promote thread' in the thread tools bar, with options like, "stick thread", "bump thread", "promote with ad" etc.

Once again in a situation where such features would increase revenue for both myself, and my site users.

Something needs to be done! Much, much money left on the table not having such features.

I have a free mod to accomplish this (at least the pay per bump part) in my sig.

Is this compatible with all versions of VB 4.x.x ??

Any plans to support 2checkout??

During testing, (vb version 4.1.12), after payment I was directed here, http://www.myforum.com/testvb/misc.p...prove_redirect which ends up landing on the 'smilies' page for the forum. As seen here, http://screencast.com/t/LXlYT6wAm

Also, after payment was made (in sandbox mode), the thread was not live on the forum, it is still in moderation status.

We need a thread for this addon specifically since there are specific issues to address not necessarily relevant to this thread as a whole. Very nice mod though I appreciate it greatly, would love to see it fixed up.

Everyone I recommend to NOT download what's recommended by lancerforhire up there.

First of all, he switched the link in his signature so it's not what he says.

Second of all, he ignores support requests all together so good luck getting any help from him.

Third of all, before he switched the landing page in his signature almost immediately after his post, the addon he provided doesn't even work so opt-ing into his list isn't worth it at all.