[dneb7]

I'm getting ready to start an online forum, but I don't relish the prospect of having to monitor it for spam/abuse. It seems like having one person casually scan 10, 20, 50? forums throughout the day could easily keep the spam at bay, and each of those forums owners would probably be quite happy to pay $100+? per month to keep their forum spam free.

[danneu]

Forum spam is a generally solved problem. And a non-issue for a forum with no traffic.

If you are ever getting hit with xrumer blasts, you just need to rotate your "What is 5+5?"-type registration questions because someone hard-coded your registration process into xrumer.

Beyond that, if you have any users at all, you'll be able to cultivate an armada of volunteer moderators to help you out.

[britta]

Most of the forums I've seen have a "report spam" feature that could be made more prominent, but human moderators are also valuable.

Along the same lines, I know there are independent product developers (iOS apps, Android apps, web apps, etc.) who are tired of doing email support themselves, but find it hard to find competent contractors to do thoughtful first-level support for them. This usually doesn't require advanced technical skills, mostly just being able to interpret vague descriptions, escalate important reports, and respond with polite standard English. I imagine building up a good reputation on a public Q&A site (the Apple discussion forums or something) could be a helpful first step for this, and then using connections to get an initial client or two who can vouch for you.