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Join a forum for traffic and knowledge

January 21st, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

In my last post about ‘making money online’, I briefly touched on joining forums to increase your knowledge of a topic. There is another great benefit to joining forum and that is getting traffic to your site or sites.

I am a member of 5 forums:

Steve Pavlina – The guy who started me blogging. I am not really active in this forum and will need to make more of an effort but the conversations here are just brilliant.

Personal Development Partners – Another great forum set up by Aaron Potts of Today is that day. You’ll not meet a friendlier bunch.

Warrior Forum – I am an active member here. This forum is all about making money online and newbie’s are always welcome with open arms. This is a very busy forum with thousands of members.

Digital Point – A forum about all things internet. Another fantastic forum and always very busy with thousands of members.

Earn1Kaday – A great membership forum from Dennis Becker, which discusses ways to make money online. It is smaller but lots of great discussions with a hell of many great freebies and great information to get you started making money online. I was hesitant to pay a monthly membership fee, but it has already paid for itself for the next few months with the information I have received.

Your niche

Joining a forum in your niche will help you meet like-minded people and give you a plethora of ideas to help you along; whether it is your writing, help with your site, feedback on your blog or just networking.

I have met some great people on the forums and have spoken with them about various topics, which have helped me no end in my blogging, in my own personal development, and in my money-making ventures.

Traffic

When you sign up to a forum you are allowed a link in your signature box or most allow a few links. Put your blog link or website link in your signature box and become active in the forum.

Pretty soon, people will trust and respect what you have to say, unless you’re saying all the wrong things and not following etiquette. Be a lurker for a while to get to know the forum etiquette and to get to know the people on the boards. Typically, there are many different discussions going on and each board on a forum has a different topic for example the Personal development partners forum has boards such as:

Introductions: introduce yourself here and receive a warm welcome

Books: Discussing the latest and best personal development books

Business & Entrepreneurship: all things business

Health and fitness:

Social Bookmarking/networking:

In addition, a host of other topics all under the same roof.

When people start to trust you they will start to click on the link in your signature box to check out your writing or your product. When this happens, they might comment on the forum about your blog, which means others will see the comments at the forum, and check it out. The more you participate the more this will happen which will mean more traffic for you.

Finding a forum

To find a forum in your niche simply go to google.com and type in your niche field name and tag on forum at the end of it. For example if i type in ‘personal development forum ‘ I will find Steve Pavlina’s forum at the top.

Participating in forums

The traffic should be of secondary importance to you and not the primary reason you join a forum. Participation is the name of the game here. When you join, participate as much as you can. Don’t be shy about this and do your utmost to visit the forum once per day and join in the conversations there.

When you join a forum, you will gain knowledge from others who have been there and can offer you some great advice on anything and everything.

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Pingback by make money online » Blog Archive » Join a forum for traffic and knowledge on 21 January 2008:

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Comment by Aaron - Personal Development Partners on 22 January 2008:

Steve,

Much obliged for the shout out, and I agree 100% that forums are a great way to get your name and links to your site out there.

As you indicated, it is all about participation, though. Just joining a busy forum isn’t enough. Once you get to know the forum, participating and sharing knowledge is the key to building up the credibility that makes people want to click on over to your site.

Great article, Steve - got it Stumbled. Thanks for sharing!

Comment by Goal Setting College on 22 January 2008:

Thanks for the list of resources, Steven! Another benefit I found by posting on forums is that it helps with SEO. Especially for newer bloggers who wants to improve their organic SERP, this is one more good reason for participating!

Cheers,
Ellesse

Comment by Bigg Success on 23 January 2008:

Steve,

Thanks for the tips, especially how to google search for forums in your niche!

Comment by Steven Aitchison on 23 January 2008:

Aaron, no problem at all you have a great forum at PDP, hope you’re doing well over there.

Ellesse, glad you liked this one. It’s great for newbies for knowledge and SEO as you said.

Hi Bigg, glad you liked this.

Comment by Alex Liu on 31 January 2008:

Ya. That’s true. when I first started my new blog, I use forum as my main traffic source. I am a big fan of steve pavlina and warrior forum. But I find warrior forum have more negative post. Warriors are mostly focusing on posting content and valuable information. Steve Pavlina’s forum give me a feeling of more negative. Some of them post about forums and drill deeper to their problems.

Comment by AveriugAcinee on 18 February 2008:

Just discovered a complete list of all marked down products at Amazon, sorted by category
and % off, ranging from 50% off to 90% off (thanks Sonja for the effort).

Actually I never thought Amazon would have articles with 90% off, but only in the category
Electronics there are more than 3000 of them - look for yourself, the list is on
Bargain Hunter http://bargains-hunter.blogspot.com/2008/02/looking-for-marked-down-prices.html (which is a blog of a woman who specializes in finding good deals at
Amazon, like Britain’s “Jeanie”).

Comment by zowoco on 23 April 2008:

I was thinking what you said about your niche, and joining your niche forums. I was wondering if it would be good also to network a little further afield like this: every niche must have a niche each side of it which is either similar or complimentary. Network in the forums of those niches too.

Something else I do, I broaden the focus of my niche in that one of my posts is about how an artist markets her work. Now my niche is internet marketing but using that post I am able to broaden things out a bit by going to an art or artists’ forum. Because I am interested in art and a viable and interesting follow-up post might be to study how other artists market their work, and then to draw parallels with online marketing strategies.

For me, this is about stretching the paradigms of the frame of my niche “box” and playing about with the overall field that my niche falls in, ie: marketing in general. Thanking outside my self imposed box, and stretching the limits of the boundaries of my box help me to be more original and innovative in my central niche. We haven’t seen everything in internet marketing yet!

And we can help people from all niches in that everyone promoting a blog, website, software or affiliate link online needs a little IM savvy to get any results at all in directing traffic to their site!

Comment by Niche Affiliate Marketing Forum Templates on 10 May 2008:

Forums are a great source of niche information and resources. It is also a great way to get traffic to your niche website.