Quality Resource, Money maker, but not Waste of Time

Contrary to what John Chow’s blog featured recently the belief that Forums are a waste of time. I would have to slightly disagree with that. In my opinion, forums are an important learning resource for newbies as well as old timers. Though one must learn how to use their time wisely in order to not make it a waste of time. I will go in depth on how to use forums effectively to your advantage.

Active forums like Digitalpoint, Sitepoint are a quality resource. What can you do to use this resource as an advantage?

The number one advantage of a webmaster forum is that it helps making connections. The people who you have never met, never known that were in the same industry as you are. They are all at these active webmaster communities. You can get to know them well. From them you can get the words of your business around. You tell them because they are your friend and at some occation, they will tell their friends about it so and so forth.

Another advantage about the forums are that you learn from other people’s questions. I know there are multiple people who ask questions on forum. You probably was having the same issue, or you never heard of the issue. Now you know all about it. You can also ask your questions to public as well. Not just questions, but you can get critiques as well. Perhaps you launched a new website, and you would like to hear what others think. You can ask the community and people will respond to you with their criticism. Some are completely (ass****), but you just have to learn to ignore them.

Often times when you are on forum, you see your competitors. You can evaluate their strategies. You can track down their moves they have laid out for their product. This way you can catch upto them, or surpass them in business.

Forum advertising can be great. Buying Signature links and avatar space is a great way to get your website going. Specially, if you get the avatar space of about 1000 people on the forum, and all what the users see is these 1000 frequent posters having the same avatar. Even though the link is not there people will find out your link and visit your site. Signature links are also another option, though I have never find neither avatar or signature link working unless you get them in huge amounts.

Sitewide links on forums. If you can get a sitewide link on a forum that is one of the number one ways of increasing your backlink count. Why? because forums are tend to have numerous amount of pages. Each reply have its own page. Categories, Threads etc etc. If you can get your link on each page you will be on thousands and thousands of pages. Which will get you alot of exposure. It is silly to buy advertising on a forum which just started and have no one to view your advertisement. Unless you just want to support the owner.

Forums that offer the latest blog post and adsense sharing are awesome. Personally, I like the latest blog post because everytime the user see your name, they will see your recent post, and alot of people end up clicking those and visitng your blog. Adsense sharing cannot really make you huge money, but you can pull of a $1 a month if you get lucky. Maybe more…

Alot of people make crazy amount of money using forums. Selling blog reviews, selling templates, selling services, selling backlinks, selling signature links, selling avatars and much more. You can pretty much sell anything on huge forums. Big communities like sitepoint and digitalpoint are a good place to sell advertising for your website. It will let others know about your website. Digitalpoint’s marketplace is free therefore you might not get enough exposure, but If you advertise your website on Sitepoint’s marketplace for the $10 or whatever the service fee is. The traffic in return is huge. You get well worth that price.

Making money from signature links and avatars. When I first started the webmaster industry. I used to post alot on the forums as I had no website to manage. Just offer services, or post. I had really high reputation and decent count of post. I was on two major forums. Namepros and Digitalpoint with over 3000 posts and full rep bar. I used to sell 4 links on each of my account. The max I have generated both forums combined was $300. Selling avatar was another option which I did for a while, but It made me feel like I have lost my identity therefore I stopped selling those.

Advertise your site for free on forums. How can you do that? Simple just add your site in your signature and get a link everytime you post. You can even post your site’s URL (when necessary) in the post. If you do it over and over, people like me will leave you red rep.

Coming back to the point of John Chow is it a time waster? Well if you use your time wisely then NO. But alot of people don’t know how to manage their time therefore Yes it is a time waster for them. I know some people who post over 25 – 40 posts a day on these forums. Now, these webmasters also have their website, but instead of spending time on their website they are posting. That can be a waste of time. Another waste of time is when someone attack you on the forum. I usually do respond, but to a certain limit. Then I think it is not just worth your time if the other person is keep going and going. Use the forums wisely because they are a resource. Do not abuse the forum by spamming your url in every post of yours. Don’t make useless posts. Now days, I only post when I find absolutely necessary otherwise I don’t even do that all. Just read and move on.

These are few tips that I think everyone should know about forums.