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.

Secondly, when you become a new member of any forum, allow yourself a few days to lurk around to get a “feel” of the forum’s environment.

Make Money via Your Signature Files

Many online forums allow clickable signature file in your profile. Your signature will be shown at the end of every post.

You can redirect the signature file to your webpage where you sell a product, or you can redirect the users to a squeeze page(recommended).

To achieve high CTR (Click Through Rate) for your signature URL, good copy is vital.

Few examples of signature text that can yield high CTR are:
- How I (achieve something)!
- Don’t Click Here if you’ve (achieve something)!
- Free Report on how you (do something)!
- X product is a piece of crap, click here to find out why.

You get the idea. Your signature text should arouse the emotion or curiosity of viewers so that they want to find out more. Google “copywriting tips” and you can get tons more idea to write good copy.

Next, you want your signature text to be seen to as many people as possible. The easiest way is to browse through the forum, and contribute to the forum threads that have the most replies and views.

Or, you can start a new thread by saying something useful or controversial. When I participate in these threads, I am always giving my best answer, and then redirect the visitors to my signature subtly.

For example, there will always be discussion on the latest hot new product in any niche market. I will quickly set up a pre-sell page for that product, or a competitor product and make it my signature URL.

Next I will participate in the related discussion. If I am promoting the same product, I would share my experience and reviews. Note that your review has to be honest or people will sense that it is a blatant promotion. A fool proof way to make your review genuine is to actually point out the flaw of the product.

If I am promoting the competing product, I will pin point all the disadvantages of the product in discussion and explain why the particular competing product is better.

At the end of my posts, I simply say “interested party feel free to PM me or refer to my signature for more information”. This method has never failed to make me few hundreds per month by spending only few hours.

As you start building up credibility in the forum, you can make even more money with this method. Always rotate and test your signature text to see what works best for that particular forum.

When you find a winner, it never hurts to build up site targeting Adwords campaign on that forum. If the forum isn’t monetized with Adsense, just email and ask if the forum user accepts paid advertising. The sky’s really the limits.

This technique works especially well in desperate niche, including weight loss, make money online, gambling, investing etc. These niches usually have lucrative affiliate programs, and the niche audience are proven to be buyers(very important!).

The simplest way to find online forum is by Googling. Just go to the SE and type the following:
- keyword + forum;
- keyword + google group;
- keyword + yahoo group;
- keyword + bulletin board
- keyword + chat;
Another good resource is http://www.big-boards.com

In coming posts I will outline other methods that I’ve personally used to profit from online forums. Stay tuned!

[tags]E-Moneymarketing, online marketing, forum marketing, online forum[/tags]

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I’ve heard DigitalPoint forums are a good place to sell stuff to internet newbies. Forums are good place to make direct contact with people _if you truly have something they truly want_.

I think the best salesman is one selling something he truly believes in (in his heart).

Digital points is a pretty good forum. I don’t hang out there often though.

I’m more active over at the Warrior forum.

And yes, forum are great for networking and building up contacts!

Cheers,
Jag

FunAdvice allows links in profiles also, just not in answers to questions (it’s more spamm-y).

If anyone is looking for a new forum to visit, check us out.

I think as long as you don’t spam with worthless posts this should be tolerated by most forum moderators. After all forum content is user generated :-)

I think the quality is the fundamental and difficult to refuse site.

very cool. thanks for this. im just getting into internet marketing. all i use so far is adsense, so i think i will use this technique (squeeze page) when i get into affiliates or another product.

Dara:

Cool. Will check it out!

Apply for credit cards & Inflatables:

Spam is a big no-no. Offer quality. Give first and then take is the way to go.

Mr Lasik:

Good. The journey is still long but at least you are taking action. Go for it!

Cheers,
Jag

here’s a little secret from me

i got tons of business from digital point forum!

Hey Jag, you are absolutely right! Forums are great for advertising as long as you abide by their guidelines and affiliate links are frowned upon. Usually forum members are active Internet clickers and will often check out what you have to stand behind.

Bingo Online:

Great! What do you sell?

eCommerce solution,

Actually this post was written by a co-author, Chia Yee.

Glad you like we have here for you at E-MoneyMarekting.

Cheers,
Jag

Thanks for the giving such a important information. I will follow all the instruction written in your article.

Like Bingo, I too have success with digital point forum

mostly sell links and services on their forum

major success :)

Great tips. Thank you for sharing this.

Jag Foo, do you think forum signatures are good to promote links?
Do they count on SERPS?

Thanky you for sharing. Great tips. It will be very helpfull for me:

Hi Halifax SEO,

Yes, signature links can be considered as a link back. Definitely counts.

Will be better if you put the link in a relevant keyword to your site. Even better if the forum has very high PR.

Cheers,
Jag

I will start eventually a forum . this tips will help me. :D

Signature really counts in as an Ibl for a website..but participating on forums really matters most cause it is really a community that you can learn something from..

I Think, It’s Very Nice…

yah! dp is the best forum around here. great stuffs and members are there …

I think that people forget about web 1.0 marketing way too much. The rage is Web 2.0, facebook, myspace, etc., but the good old forum marketing still does the trick.

Thanks for your nice discussion. This will help me a lot.

jag is the man! people are now talking about web 3.0, what are your thoughts on that jag?

Man boobs:

Firstly, that’s a pretty neat name! =)

As for web 3.0, well, perhaps it is too early to say that.

Or maybe we could be in web 4.0 for all we know. The net is constantly evolving.

Right now, user generated content and social media is all the rage. And that already is defined as web 2.0.

But if you look back, you will realize that ‘web 2.0′ stuff such as forum existed long time ago.

So for me, I don’t really focus on what is web 2, 3, 4, or 5 or 100.

I just focus on the value I can give back to people like you.

Cheers,
Jag

You really hit the nail on the head when you say this: PROVIDE VALUE. This is the one thing that many people tend to overlook, and then don’t realize why it’s not working for them and/or they are getting warned/banned from forums.

One way of attacting attention in the discussion forums is to “criticize” a popular e-product. Write a critical analysis.

That is very useful to me .

Nice post. I agree if you have a product related to forum topic and use some good description in signature you can get alot of traffic and sales.

Etf fundss last blog post..Gold double long etf.

You really hit the nail on the head when you say this: PROVIDE VALUE.