An online forum is simply a place where people with common interests gather and share ideas, news, views, jokes and so on. It’s a 21st century version of the public meeting with all of the passion, emotion and fervour that such meetings create.
In fact the internet arose from forums in two areas – academia and the military.
If you can harness positive emotions around your business, you’ll be in a powerful position – remember, people buy on emotion.
Examples of informal forums are at Yahoo groups. Other good ones are at www.tripadvisor.com, www.ultrashock.com and Michael Green’s internet marketing forum at http://www.howtocorp.com/sales.php?offer=Incise&pid=54
Like any discussion group, an online forum needs rules, guidelines and quality control – it’s a serious undertaking but potentially very powerful and profitable. There are also legal issues particularly those relating to data protection and defamation. Go to www.dca.gov.uk for more on this.
You should also identify discussion forums in your sector. Take part, contribute and weave in subtle references to your site and business. Be careful to check the forum’s etiquette before you take part. Some are strict about obvious promotion. The trick is to be seen as a ‘giver’ not a ‘taker’. If you offer help on the net, ‘your cup will runneth over’.
One major benefit is that you'll usually be allowed to link back to your own web site - back-links help your Gogle rankings. The other is that content is hard work - a forum means that contributors are creating content for you.
If you want to learn about using a forum to make money, try these excellent resources:
How To Start A Forum
http://www.howtocorp.com/sales.php?offer=Incise&pid=50
Start A Forum - Mini-Course
http://www.howtocorp.com/sales.php?offer=Incise&pid=53
Advertising – use Google to make easy money!
As with affiliate marketing, there are two sides to advertising – also known as banner advertising - on the net. You can promote your business on other sites or offer adspace on your own site.
In many ways, advertising is anathema to the internet. The net’s a ‘pull’ medium – people use it to find information they want. They’re in control and anything that gets in their way is unwelcome. To overcome this, your advertising has to be creative, internet savvy (an interactive element helps) and above all, relevant.
A few years ago net advertising was very expensive. It’s now much more reasonable but you can still waste more money on it than on any other activity. If you think it’s worth a try, you must test different ideas and different sites. You can use your site logs to analyse whether the ads are directing traffic to your site. Measure response and conversion, both to sales and ezine subscription.
Another way to use advertising on the net is to think of yourself as a publisher and allow people to advertise on your site.
The easiest way to do this is through Google Adsense. You can subscribe at www.google.com/adsense. The way it works is that Google serves up Adword ads that are relevant to your site. You get paid every time someone clicks on an ad. You can customise the appearance of the ads too so that they fit with your site.
But probably more profitable is affiliatepowerads – instead of getting a few cents per click you can earn over $100 per sale. It’s just as easy as Google Adsense and a lot more lucrative. To find out how go to http://www.affiliatepowerads.com/start.php?m=paullock56
Advertising is a great way of adding interest to your site and generating some extra revenue, provided it doesn’t interfere too much with what you want people to do. The fact is though, that a high proportion of visitors won’t buy, so offering something that they might be interested in makes sense.
How to harness the power of forums AND use Google to make easy money - To learn more about this author, visit Paul Lock's Website.
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Paul Lock
(Visit Paul's Website)
Brought up in London and been in marketing
since the days of Johnny Rotten - yes,
that long. Corporations may be slow moving
and full of political windbags but
they're a great way to get your training.
After 20 years 'training' I went into
the agency world and set up my own company
three years ago. We help small businesses
make the most of their web marketing
investment, from design and planning to
search engine optimisations and analytics.
If you can't measure it, don't waste
your money - are you a business person or
a gambler? Over the years I've made more
mistakes than you could shake a stick at
and, on the basis that an investment in
knowledge pays the best returns, I offer a
few morsels which might help you make
fewer mistakes than me. I hope my articles
help and feel free to visit my web site.
Best of luck,
Paul
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