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We are launching a real estate website with some forums too. We need experts (lawyers, architects, etc.) to contribute to our forums for some first line advice. How would you attract such experts to contribute as volunteers? We do expect a lot of traffic from faithful visitors, because we will offer other services too.

We were thinking of putting up a 'Partners' page with the name and website of contributors who answer at least 50% of the questions in their domain, allowing them to attract customers for their paid advice for complex problems. Any pitfalls in this approach?

Other suggestions to attract and incentivize them?

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What if contributing to your forum increased an experts credibility on his/her field? – BhargavPatel Dec 23 '12 at 2:34

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How about manually picking a out a few of the most interesting questions asked by your users and then reaching out to a few relevant experts saying "we have this question, would you mind pitching in for advice?" As long as they are credited and linked back to, I imagine most people wouldn't mind writing a brief response on your website.

Once a you have a few experts' responses on your site, you can reach out to more saying "we already had these people participate, looking to grow the expert base, would you like to pitch in?"

To motivate the few initial ones, you can also try sending traffic their way "up front." Post a reply on one of your forums saying "such and such may be able to help you". Then contact such and such saying "your website is popular with our users, some feedback from you on our forums would be very popular."

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Maybe it's a bit more work what you propose than just sending out a mail, but probably it's the most realistic way to get started. I like the idea of sending traffic up front, at least it's measurable. – user2387 Sep 14 '10 at 18:14
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"We do expect a lot of traffic from faithful visitors" If you can accomplish this, the experts will follow, specially if they have a chance to to do business with your high valuable visitors.

The hard part is to get visitors to the site, once you have that, I am sure the experts will come knocking on your door. I believe you have the chicken and egg problem.

Check this question for some advice on the chicken and egg problem.

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It surely is the chicken and the egg. Problem is that we're going to launch a press release, which has quite a good chance to be picked up. When we do get lots of traffic in a short period, we risk to get a lot of questions (eggs) and we don't have a chicken to take care of them yet. If the chicken doesn't come immediately then, you know what happens to the eggs. Sorry, I got carried away there... :) – user2387 Sep 14 '10 at 18:18

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