If you learn how to use forums to make money online, you will have a strong tool at your disposal that has proved to be very successful as an advertising medium. Although it might seem difficult to monetize a forum, or use one for personal profit, many people do so very successfully, and there are no reasons why you should not also do also.
First, let’s have a look at how joining forums can be a means of making money online. It is important that forums you joined are related to your business, and then you should meet people who will either need your services, or be willing to purchase your products. If you sell health products, don’t join a forum on keeping fish!
Once you have joined the forum, look for people with problems and help them to solve them. The more valuable your postings are to others, the more you will be appreciated and respected on the forum. A mistake that many people make when joining forums is to use them for their own ends. They immediately advertise their products or offer their services, but all that achieve initially to be ignored; or criticized by other forum members, and ultimately to be banned from the forum.
Forum members appreciate those that contribute to the community rather than take, and once they see how valuable your contributions are, they will be more likely to tolerate your commercial advertising. Contribute first by helping others and making your own useful posts, and then gradually introduce an offer for your services, including your website URL in your signature (or ’sig’).
That signature can be the way how to use forums to make money online, because if you can set it up to be clickable, then you will find it a lot easier to attract visitors to your website or blog. For these purposes I am using the terms blog and website as being synonymous: they are both online platforms that can be used to make money, and both can be linked to from forum signatures.
Another way to make money from forums is to answer a problem and then provide your web page URL as providing more information. To take this further, you can provide a solution, but state that it is too complex or would take up too much space to explain in full, so please ‘click here to get the full solution to your problem’. You then provide a page designed to collect the visitors’ names and email addresses before relaying them to the page on your website that provides the solution.
You should also include a link back to your website from your profile. If you do your work well, and are able to help a few forum members with their problems, then they and other members are going to want to know more about you. They will click to your profile and see your home website, and they will possibly be intrigued enough to pay it a visit. Don’t forget that this will be an ongoing situation, and that those reading the forum posts later will feel the same way.
You won’t benefit a great deal from only one forum, but you will if you seek out several that are relevant to your niche. It won’t take too much time to make a quick post to each, and since many forum members will be like you and belong to more than one, these are people that will have multiple exposure to your forum posts and your website and blog URLs.
One of the better ways in which to use forums to make money online is to have your own forum. You can get software online to do this - both free and paid. The free software is OK to allow you to get your feet wet, but ultimately you will have to pay for it, although by then you will be making enough money to afford it!
If you own a forum, you can place ads on it as you like, in the form of Adsense, affiliate programs or even paid ads, paid for by others that want their advert displayed on your forum. For the latter your forum will generally have to be established, and running for some time. However, it can be a lucrative source of money.
Another possible way to use forums is to develop a niche forum, and charge for membership. You have to provide them with some incentive, but if you can show them that membership will be of advantage to them in their own quests to make money, then you could be on to a winner. In fact, it could be worthwhile you employing others to set up and run the forum.
These are a few ideas of how to use forums to make money online, although perhaps you can think of one or two more yourself!
To Your Success
Carol Oon
The “Nice” Mentor
Don’t Quit, ok? Be Persistent, ok? At the end of the “dark” tunnel, there is always “light”!
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