Have you ever paid your staff for working on your forum or thought about doing so? Do you think if you paid your staff they might do a better job or maybe slack and become a big money hungry? Personally, I don't think I would pay my staff, but it depends on what kind of site I'm working on and how much money I make via it.
I wouldn't pay staff on like a forum because I believe that is a community based role, I do pay developers to make stuff though
If the site was as big as WebHostingTalk, for example, and generating a healthy amount of revenue I would probably consider paying my staff. Running an active forum of that magnitude isn't an easy task. However if it was a small forum, I'd go without paying. Money can be a motivating factor for sure, but you would have to keep a close eye because some may look active but not doing their job in full as required, meaning your paying them to do nothing.
@Austin said it all there. I don't personally pay my staff, but if I had enough ad revenue I would try to
I haven't paid the staff. They worked on a voluntary basis and I was doing my best to get a lot of their load. Now I don't have any mods (don't need them), but, when time will come, they'll work on a voluntary basis again. i do try to give them ad options in the site and few features to make up for their support, though.
I don't pay my staff at all, we just tend to offer sweet deals to one another as payment for everything we do around the place. We offer each other free hosting for projects and the lot so I guess in a way that is the staff payment on my forum, haha. I wouldn't tend to pay my staff though unless we were huge, and I mean scary huge. Sure, if we ever get ad revenue it'll be split but that is a short while away.
I did try paying staff on a couple of forums but they were slack and didn't deserve being paid. It seems even if people are paid they still think they can not do what I ask of them. If I have a paid position I will have a topic for that position stating what they need to do daily, and what needs to be done before the week is up etc. So it's really not that difficult to follow a setup a forum has.
I have never on any forum I have owned paid my staff. I prefer to take on staff who enjoy the forum and really want to see it work just as much as I do. I have on a few occasions been approached myself to moderate on a forum for cash however I have always turned these down. Many will say that I am mad for doing so but I think that if I was to take a mod job that was paid it wouldn't be something I would enjoy as much.
