Thanks for the help.

Steve.

On forums, it depends a lot on the niche and exactly what you’re marketing. For example, if you’re posting in a fishing forum and trying to funnel that traffic toward Adsense or even certain affiliate offers it may not work well. But, if you sell a unique fishing lure or run a fishing lodge it might be quite helpful to you.

Of course, you don’t want to forget the indirect traffic you’ll get from simply having good backlinks related to your niche from forums. Many pre-owned domains I buy have forum backlinks and these are often effective in restarting a domain for particular keywords.

On backlinks, I did write this article, Earn Online Cash with Anchored Links that does cover the basics but I could certainly write another article on the topic.

This being said I find that you won’t necessarily profit from being in forums because most users know the deal and are just quite selfish. At the end of the day its ‘all of sElf and none of thee’ really. You do manage to pick up useful tips or advice but at the end of the advice that individual has an ulterior motive. Many newbies are still trying go learn the lingua of ‘backlinking’ and al the other words that go with it without really knowing what to do to help them self. Perhaps if you went back to basics and schooled those who want to learn what it means to backlink etc we newbies would see results.

One important thing to remember about forum traffic is that it doesn’t typically convert well for Adsense and most affiliate offers. It can work well though if you’re selling exclusive or semi-exclusive info products. With a little schmoozing and a soft sell approach you can get to a sale or two a day and this can add up quickly. Of course, links from related forums are always good for improving your Google ranking and authority in an area.

It’s true, forums can be time hogs. The idea is to budget your time wisely and have good, relevant, content both in the forum post and on the target site. This helps insure stable links, especially deep links to posts and pages. The nice thing is that while you’ll get some immediate traffic from the forum you’ll still get search engine juice from it for a long time afterward.

T