Bitcointalk.org was originally set up by Satoshi when he launched bitcoin, and is the centre of a lot of bitcoin/altcoin related commercial activity. One such commercial opportunity is earning from signature campaigns.
What is a signature campaign?
Signature campaigns are when your posts on bitcointalk all have a sponsored signature, and you typically get paid by the sponsor for every post you make on the forum.
The best thread on signature campaigns is the following updated thread, which lists all the campaigns and their criteria for joining:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615953.0
You can easily make a bit of coin doing simple forum posting - for example a full member can earn 0.0003 btc per post, which is nice pocket change especially if you were going to post anyway.
However, as you can see, there arn't many opportunities for new accounts - all the most lucrative campaigns are for senior accounts. But how do you get to be a senior or hero member? It's not as simple as posting a lot - bitcointalk has a complicated activity formula to prevent people spamming their way up the ranks.
Here is how the Forum Ranks on Bitcointalk work
The throttle on how quickly members progressed up the ranks was introduced in 2013 in the following thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178608.0
First of all, here are the ranks:
You move up the ranks based on Activity which is defined as
"Activity = min(time * 14, posts)" and "Maximum of 14 activity every 2 weeks."
With time defined as
"time = number of two-week periods in which you've posted since your registration".
In other words your activity level increases by 14 every two weeks, as long as you have made 14 posts in that two week period. If you have made less than 14 posts, it will increase by the number of posts, and if you have made more than 14 posts, it will increase just by 14 in the two week period.
It should take just over four weeks to graduate from newbie to jr member, another four weeks to make member, and another eight weeks on top of that to make Full Member. As you can see it is a slow process.
You can speed up the process by buying an existing account, and of course there is a mini industry of people who go through the tedious process of creating and building accounts to sell on.