The saddest place on the web? The beautifully styled but totally empty forum. It’s the stark reminder that so often, if you build it, they won’t come.

Now you have an option - try kick-starting your site discussion forum with a paid posting service like ForumsFirst. Their stable of professional writers produce blog commentary and discussion threads on-demand and tailor-made to your website or blog. ForumsFirst offers a variety of reasonable content packages. For those who want to dip their toes in water, a trial blog package only costs $5. You get 12 comments, a minimum of 40 words each, from two registered users. Ready to dive in? The Jumbo package will set you back $225 for 750 comments, from 10-12 registered users, over the course of 15 weeks.

ForumsFirst also offers bookmarking services. For $20, they will add your website or blog to del.ic.ious and other top bookmarking sites. Search engines like Google and Yahoo rely on social bookmarking sites for their vast catalog of user-approved urls. In other words, the more links your site has on del.ic.ious, the better your site will rank in organic search.

If your visitors currently hear crickets when they visit your forum, here’s how to get the party started.