The One Year Millionaire

Hey guys… In this issue of the ‘ONE YEAR MILLIONAIRE‘ I am going to talk about how you can use your membership to a web forum to your advantage when it comes to marketing your website! The best way that you can do this is by joining a community of either webmasters or a community based around your niche. I will explain in detail so that you can fully grasp the concept.

Getting traffic to your website is always one of the hardest tasks for a webmaster. Developing quality backlinks and other SEO efforts will take time. Joining a forum on the internet isn’t a solution… its not something that you should do to avoid building backlinks and to avoid having to optimize your page because those factors will play an immense part in your web site’s success, but it is one way of building links, traffic, trust and online reputation. These things can greatly increase your traffic if you do it right!

I am going to list the steps involved:

1. Choosing a forum.
Choosing the right forum can be a hard decision or it can be a really easy one. It all depends what your website is trying to achieve… if you have a blog about video games you can join the forums/communities at a couple of the big video game sites like gamespot, ign, etc. If you are into music then there are forums on websites like mtv and billboard. Always make sure that it has to do with something that you are offering because later on you will be promoting on this website. You don’t want to just suddenly try to start promoting car tires on a women’s health board. Once you have decided where to take your efforts, its time to register.

2. Joining/Registration.
Joining a forum is easy. Most of them are free to join and just require you to fill out a small form with your name, desired user name, birthday and stuff like that. Don’t pick a user name that has your website title or url in it (this looks way too spammy and people will automatically assume that it is your purpose for joining the forum). Try using your first or last name or a nickname that is unrelated. This will take less than a minute of your time and once you have completed filling out the form they will usually send an authorization link/verification link by email. Verify your account and you are ready to go!

3. Build a Reputation.
This is a really important step. In order to be taken seriously and if you want to later promote your website through that forum then you will have to take time and effort to make a good impression on the forum and its users! If you are new and start promoting right away then people will not like this, so build a rep before you try anything! The best ways to get a good reputation on forums is to be helpful to others and try to answer questions that others may have. Sometimes if you don’t know the answer… do the research and find out. You will notice that this will help you learn a lot as well as helping others. If other people are promoting their websites or would like an opinion, jump to this opportunity and give them a brief review of what you think is good/bad with their website. Especially on larger message boards you will find that the traffic to your website will increase once you start participating in a web forum.

4. Signature Links.
Many forums allow you to put a link to your website or services in a small signature that appears at the bottom of every post. This is a great way to promote your site and all you have to do is post on the forum to get more and more people to see your links. Think of it as free advertisement, the harder you work; the more you will squeeze out of it. Don’t abuse this privilege, make sure that you comply with all the forums rules and policies!

5. Have some fun.
There is nothing worse then posting on a forum and looking at it as if it is some sort of tedious work! Learning new things and participating in forum threads can be lots of fun. Try to become part of the online community that has welcomed you with open arms and you will realize that it doesn’t seem like work at all. Promoting your website through posting on a forum is something that you should do in your spare time.

That is just a simple break down of the possibilities with posting on forums. You can promote all types of different websites from blogs to eCommerce and your success will directly reflect your efforts. So now what are you waiting for? Go post on some forums!

In the next issue of the ‘ONE YEAR MILLIONAIRE‘ we are going to look at a simple way to get quality backlinks to your website/blog that could take just a couple minutes a day.