How to Profit from Online Forums

As you may know, online forum is a website where people gather and engage in discussion in niche topics.

Forums are also known as message board, bulletin board, discussion forums, discussion boards, or online community.

There are all sort of forum for every niche under the sun: weight loss, sexuality, money management, celebrity, self improvement, knitting etc.

Do you know that online forums are actually goldmine for Internet marketers?

When done right, forums can make you ton of cash. Now before you hit the back button, I am not suggesting that you spam the forums. If you use the following strategies, I will be very surprised if you are not making money at all.

Now, before you start marketing in any forum, remember this golden rule: your contribution has to provide value to the forum members.

Period.

Before you post, ask yourself, “is my answers useful to the member?”

If not, don’t even bother.

Never include any affiliate links in your post as it is frowned upon by many forum moderators.

Customer Is ALWAYS Right – Or Is He?

Conventional business wisdom states that the customer is always right. He can do no wrong. We are the service provider. We listen. We serve.

Spot on? Or BULL?

For me, I try to give value and go the extra mile for every client and partner I work with.

As much as I can, I try to accede to every request that is within my means and the scope of the working agreement. Because if I can make them happy, I have a loyal customer – for life!

And that customer can refer another customer to me and so on. It grows from there…

Having said that, customers can be a real PAIN in the ARSE! Especially when their demand goes overboard.

Case in point.

I offer a bonus package to a product I was promoting. Anyone that buys through me, gets a value-added bonus on top of a cash rebate.

This particular guy bought through me. Fair enough. I delivered everything that I promised. Even he couldn’t deny that.

He asked for more. No problem.

I gave.

He asked for even more. Getting more and more demanding all the time.

Split Testing – 2 Opt-In Forms or 1?

Split testing is essentially an A/B test. We put 2 version out, A and B.

We set one variable to be tested (e.g. headlines in a sales copy) and keep all other factors for both versions constant.

And we send it out to test with fair exposure to both, and measure the ensuring actions that return.

So Why The Heck Do We Have To Test?

Marketing is about testing. It’s about bettering the previous version and keeping the improvement process going. Again and again.

Take a look at this equation:

Sales = Conversion x Traffic

Now, traffic takes time to build. But, you can easily improve your conversion by tweaking a headline, an offer or a bonus!

For example, you will have 5 sales if you get 1% conversion out of 500 visitors. To get 10 sales, you will need 1000 visitors, assuming your conversion stays at 1%

BUT, if you increase your conversion by just 1 more % with the same 500 visitors, you would already have gotten 10 sales. Is 1 more % difficult to achieve?

IT CAN BE DONE!

We Went In Empty Handed, But Came Out…

You know what? I actually typed out a whole long entry for this. But I wiped them off on second thoughts. Too long-winded.

So now, I’m just going to go in to the meat. Straight to the point.

In the last entry, I talked about an encounter with a cab driver in Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia, during our holiday there. And how we persuaded him to lower his cab fare.

Got some nice comments and email feedbacks. I thank you folks for that – from the bottom of my heart!

Today, I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about a trip to a store (a chocolate boutique) during the same trip in KL, whereby we went in empty handed, but came out….you guessed it…FULL of products!

Why?

1. Personal Attention

The shop assigned a staff to us. Specially for us.

He tended to us, catered to our questions. Brought us around. Let us try various chocolate samples. Even letting us try more on our request. Carried our basket as well.

And finally also completed the payment for us.

Negotiating With The Cab Driver – A Persuasion’s Tale

Happy greetings to all! 2008 is finally here. A successful and glorious year awaits you!

Are you revved up already?

I had a blast ushering the new year! I hope yours was just as good, if not better!

Today, I want to talk about an event I encountered when I went for a short getaway break with my friends to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 5 days ago.

What I’m about to reveal to you soon ties in with some of the persuasion techniques I wrote about recently.

As you can guess from the title, it revolves around an affair concerning me, my friends and a certain cab driver.

Wanna hear more? Read on…

Warning: It is gonna be a long entry but an interesting one… That I assure you…

This is what happened…

Over the weekend, I went up to Kuala Lumpur with 3 friends. There was the four of us – 2 guys, 2 gals. We wanted a good refreshing break after a whole hard year of work! And we certainly got it in Malaysia!