3 Approaches to Successful Forum Marketing

One of the easiest way’s to get traffic is through forum marketing. But it does take some time and effort to do it.

Think about it… dozens, if not, 100’s or even 1000’s of people will be exposed to your message and if it is good, they will be curious enough to check out your website to see what you are doing to make money.

The ways to expose the visitor of a forum to your message is simply by placing a message with a link to your website in your signature file. People who will visit your posts will be exposed to that signature file and, if they like what they read, they will click to the next page to see what your site is all about. An example of a good signature file you could copy when you do something with Internet marketing related products is:

I Made My First $1,000 Online!
See How I Did It Here...
==> ACS.com

This traffic can be handled in a couple of ways, you can either send them directly to the website of the product you sell (which I don’t recommend) or you could send them to a lead capture page, collect their information and then send them to a product that you want to sell. I recommend the last strategies because in that way you will build a list of interested prospects that you can follow up on again and again.

To see a killer lead capture page in action, you can click here.

Forum marketing may be the easiest way but there are certain ways of approaching this. I mean, you cannot just shamelessly advertise your product on the forum. It will not make you very popular and chances are BIG that you will be kicked out.

So here are the different approaches you should consider when you want to advertise in forums:

Approach #1: Ask questions

You can ask a question about any subject you don’t know a lot about (you can even do this when you do know a lot about it). This is a great way to get some fast exposure to your ad and most people just LOVE being an expert.

Approach #2: Answer questions

Are you an expert on a certain topic? Well, just go ahead and start answering questions. But don’t make your answer too long. Just make it as long as needed because you don’t want to bore their brains out and have them click away faster than they can see your ad. And when you do choose for the long way, at least make it an exciting read.

Approach #3: Ask for a critique

People just LOVE giving critiques so just go ahead, ask them for it. So whenever you post a new article on your Blog, post something about it on all the forums asking them to check out your Blog. This way you will also get a link back to your Blog and you get exposure to your ad.

OK, these are just 3 approaches you can use to get started and get some forum traffic. I think you will have enough information to get started using forums to drive traffic to any of your websites, FAST.

But HOW do I start now? Isn't this stuff too much work for too little results?

Well, true and not true. In fact, the traffic you are getting is extremely targeted AND if you give answers to questions, people will soon see you as an “expert” in your field and you will get more credibility in that way. Now, because you do, people will trust you more and you will get more sales.

So is it worth the effort? MOST CERTAINLY!

A couple of great forums to participate in are:

• http://www.ablake.net/forum
• http://www.howtocorp.com/forum
• http://www.bizweb2000.com/wwwboard
• http://www.mlmforums.com/forums
I hope you found this useful and have enough information to participate in the forums right now and start getting some much needed traffic.

Best Wishes

Mike Serovey

7 Profitable Joint Venture Tactics For Your Blog

By Liz Tomey

Blogging has been a very hot topic for a few years now. Internet
marketers have embraced blogging, and turned it into an
incredible marketing tactic. I've done some "joint venturing"
with my blogs, and I'd like to reveal my most profitable joint
venture blogging tactics to you. Here are 7 joint venture
blogging tactics that you can implement right now in your own
business.

1. Find someone that has a blog related to your topic. Offer to
blog about their blog if they will blog about yours. In doing
this, you'll both be swapping blog readers that you may have not
been able to reach otherwise. Do this with several different
people that have blogs related to your topic and soon you will
have a huge blog readership.

2. Endorse a product that belongs to someone else via your blog.
Ask them to endorse one of your products in exchange. By doing
this both of you will benefit from each others blog visitors.

3. Grab a sheet of paper and a pen, or open your word processing
program. Now go to a blog search engine and search for keywords
related to your blog. When you find blogs related to your blog,
write down (or type) the blog website address, any side notes
about the blog, and the contact information of the blog owner.
Now take your list and start emailing each blog owner for a link
swap.

4. Get a group of people together that are bloggers. All of you
pick one topic that can be profitable either by promoting
affiliate products or by Google Adsense revenue. All of you will
start blogging about the topic. Take the RSS feeds from each
persons blog, and place them on one website. All of you will make
reference to this site where the RSS feeds are placed. By doing
this you will all share traffic via a group effort.

5. If you know someone that blogs on the same topic that you do,
ask for a blog post exchange. Tell them you will write a "guest"
blog post for them, if they will do the same. That way both of
you will be giving fresh content from a different person to your
readers. Adding some variety to your blogs will keep people
coming back often.

6. Create an audio blog post (podcast) for a few blogs related to
your blog. Make sure to mention your blog in it. Tell the blog
owner if they post the audio blog post on their blog, that you
will create an audio blog post mentioning their blog for them,
and post it to your own blog. You'll only want to do this with
blogs that have a lot of readers because there is a bit more work
involved in this tactic.

7. Large businesses actually hire people to blog for them. Not
because it's profitable for these big companies but because it
let's the outside world know what's going on with these big
companies. This starts to build a trust with the people who read
these blogs. Knowing this information, I decided to start a
testimonial category on my blog. In doing this, people begin to
trust me and see me as an authority figure on the topic I am
blogging on. You can also do this by telling people you have
started a testimonial category on your blog. Ask them to leave a
true testimonial on your blog in exchange for something like a
free ebook. If they have a testimonial category on their blog,
tell them you will give them a testimonial if they will give you
one. Always remember though only give true to heart testimonials.

Liz Tomey has been involved in Direct Mail Advertising since
1998. She runs a network of over 25 sites related to Direct Mail
Advertising. After coming into the Internet marketing world with
a bang, and sharing her secrets to quick profits, she has now
created http://www.JointVentureSeeker.com which teaches marketers
the true POWER of joint ventures!

You are more than welcome to reprint this article on your site,
blog, or your newsletter if you would like. Just make sure that
you include the resource box!

That's it for today! I'm starting my weekend early, so I'll talk
to you all next week!

As always, if you have ANY questions or comments,
please let me know by going to

http://www.LizLive.com

To your success...

Liz Tomey
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Thoughts on Being an Affiliate

In the beginning, God created the Affiliate Program, and He saw that it was good. Seriously, I made many of the affiliate mistakes discussed in forums on affiliate marketing. I even joined a website called “Affiliate Mistakes”. Funny, I never used it or really read their material. That is yet another one of my affiliate mistakes! I tried to sell ebooks that I have yet to read, or products that I never tried. Big mistake!

I used to try to sell cars, vacuum cleaners, cutlery, water treatment systems, air purifiers, and more. Even if I truly liked the product, I often had a problem with the canned sales pitch that I was forced to use. There always seemed to be a certain amount of deceit involved in them. Or, I thought that the price was too high. I came to the conclusion that I would never truly succeed as a salesman.

However, I realized that every legitimate business has to sell something to survive. That something can be a tangible product like soap (Amway), a service like carpet cleaning, or an idea. Century 21 started out as nothing more than an idea and had several affiliates long before they sold their first house! Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer licensed DOS to IBM even before they owned it themselves! They paid a programmer $50,000 for the first working version of DOS, changed a few lines of code (so that they could say that they wrote it), and licensed it to IBM for several million dollars!

I recently discovered that nearly all salespeople approach sales with a completely wrong attitude! They are so interested in the transaction, that they often blow the real sales. They have no clue as to what it is that they are really selling! I highly recommend that you read an ebook called Sales Without the Sucker Punch by Len Foley.

This ebook clears up all of the myths about selling and makes it a really painless process once you understand how NOT to sell.

Many “gurus” recommend selling your own product and then putting related products in news letters as the back end sales. They state that affiliate products are the best back end if you run out of your own products to sell. Also, if they turn down all of your stuff sell them a competitor’s product and collect your commission!

Affiliate Programs