Been busy of late with the launch and with a few Internet problems. Arsenal won too, which is always good. :razz: - had a little time to write this up

Forums are the easiest way to promote a new site.

Especially large ones.

Every day, you get people asking on the very forums they should be “stealing” traffic from… “how do I promote my site”?

The problem is, a lot of people, including those that read this blog think that IM / MMO is the only way forward. IM / MMO is a very, very, very easy niche to do well in, if you work it right… however, when starting out a different niche is better to go for. Which niche? That’s entirely up to you.

Why other niches? The thing is, people in the IM niche are constantly being sold to… they’re preconditioned to avoiding ads, preconditioned to be wary of affiliate links and more knowledgeable than your average web user. If you recommend a product to an IM-wary user, they’ll usually wonder whether you’re doing so solely because it’s a good product, or only because it pays a better commission than product B (and so they should wonder).

Whereas you recommend a product to a non IM-wary user and they’ll check it out, buy it if they have a need… as long as you cloak your affiliate link, they’ll probably use it simply because they don’t know how not to.

Anyways, on to forums.

You can grow your blog(s) entirely using forums. I did this for this very blog, simply because when I started out I had no idea what social networking / bookmarking, comments, contests and various other things were. I didn’t even know what RSS stood for and still don’t. :razz:

At its peak, this blog was getting around 4,000 - 5,000 uniques per month JUST from forums.

Of course, you need to do this carefully. Forums can be a huge time waster if you’re not careful - you can easily promise to spend just ten minutes on one and find yourself a couple hours later having nothing done.

How should you get the most out of forums? For me, it’s pretty simple really.

Out of every five minutes you are on a forum, you should be doing at least one thing that benefits you.

Some may think that this is selfish, but let me explain.

Putting out a high quality forum post does benefit you, as people will grow used to them and trust you to be a knowledgeable and high quality source of information.

Changing your avatar to something catchy benefits you.

Having an interesting signature benefits you.

As long as you can see that there is enough interest in the niche, start a blog on that topic. Promote the blog on the forum for a month, producing 1-3 quality articles on that blog per week (these can/should be outsourced, of course) and at the end of that month promote a high quality information product. If your reputation is reasonably good on the forum, and the posts you’ve done on the blog are good too, your conversions will be awesome.

Next step? Flip the blog.

Rinse, repeat, over and over and over and over and over again.

Of course, if you’re lazy… *cough* you can outsource the posting on the forums. You should aim to pay around $0.10 per post, each around 10 - 20 words long and all on the topic of the forum (none in general chat etc). You want around 500 - 1,000 posts on the forum (more or less depending on the size). Make sure you make use as much as possible of whatever’s allowed to help you stand out - avatar, signature, blog feed, different colour text in posts and so on.

The great thing is, that once you build up this reputation on forums, it remains… unless you do anything stupid of course. You can market new sites, promote other products, link to your other sites to get them indexed fast and so on.

Building backlinks. If the forum is dofollow, each post with your signature link enabled counts as ONE backlink to your site. So 1,000 posts = 1,000 backlinks. Of course, most forums allow you to have 4-5 signature links, meaning that you can help along multiple sites at the same time. You can even sell your signature links - again, signature links on ‘niche’ forums tend to sell for more than they would on IM-knowledgeable forums, since users tend to be less unaware and signature links will get clicked more.

Having backlinks also adds value to a site, and you can easily agree with a buyer to keep the link there for X months even after the site is sold. Remember, everything that adds value is good. :)

You can even create and promote your own product, as if you’re reputed enough and market yourself as an ‘expert’ in the niche (outsourcing IS king) people will buy from you. Of course, make sure the product itself is of high quality and if you don’t know what you’re talking about, make sure the person that you outsource to DOES know what they’re talking about. You could even build a list through a catchy signature link on forums alone.

Forums should provide you with multiple ideas… if you’re not milking them already, you’re missing out. Get to it! :)

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