Use Forum Marketing to Promote Your Website

If done correctly, forum marketing can be a powerful and free marketing tool. Forum marketing is definitely one of the most effective forms of free advertising available today. If you've got time on your hands, but no money to advertise, leveraging forums to promote your products, services, or website should be part of your daily routine.

The concept behind forum marketing is simple. You act as if you are not selling anything (which in fact, you are not!). All you are doing is interacting with people that match the product you are promoting and are therefore likely to buy it if they look at the offer. Your offer is appended to your signature automatically in every post you make.

Here's a sample signature you can use:
Still trying to get your site to rank #1 on Google
I'm not - Click here to find out why...
http://marketingscoop.com

Your job in forum marketing is to simply be engaged and have fun. Really there are no catches here, no strange angles. The only thing you can't do is talk openly about the product you are promoting because it just doesn't work.

Here are five approaches to successful forum marketing:
1. Answer questions. If you're an expert on the topic, you can easily help people who ask questions in the forum.
2. Ask a question. If you're not an expert on the topic (i.e. internet marketing) there must be a lot of things you want to know. This is a quick and legitimate way to add a lot of posts to any forum.
3. Ask for a critique. Say you write an article and post it in your blog. Make a quick post to ask what people think. You'll not only get exposure for your signature. You'll also get a good back link to your blog.
4. Ask for an opinion. If you come across a product or service and want to research it first, forums are a great way to get direct feedback. For instance, you could make a post that says, "Has anyone had any experience with this product...?" It's that simple. Just go to ClickBank and ask about every product in the marketplace!
5. Offer an article. You wrote an article, published it to your blog, and asked for a critique in the forums. Now go back and make a post offering your article for publication with the condition that they leave your resource box intact.

There are a variety of forums out there. To get started, visit one of the high-traffic forums below and sign up for an account.

AssociatePrograms.com - Affiliate Marketing Forum
eWealth.com - the #1 Affiliate Hangout
MoneyMakerGroup.com - Forum About Making Money

Next, log in and update your Profile. This is where you can add your signature which will appear at the end of every post you make. Read the rules about posting. Basically, you either ask specific and relevant questions or you answer questions by replying to posts that other members make.

Start by looking at what others are posting and how people are replying to those posts. Once you get a feel for it, post as much and as often as you can. Never advertise in your posts (except where permitted). Let your signature do the work for you.

You can get a surprisingly large amount of sales from affiliate links that were posted in forums on discussions about the programs you promote. You should say something positive about the product and then ask if anyone has heard of it.

There are a lot of newbies posting in forums who are desperately seeking direction to help them start making money online. Whenever you see a post like that, reply and say, "Hey - Check out this site...” and explain how it really helped you. M ake sure you leave your affiliate link in your signature.

Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert and Search Eninge Optimization Specialist. He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and has appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media.