Affiliate Marketing Training Online

Traffic Lesson:

Generating Traffic to Your Website:
How Online Communities Can Get You Tons Of Traffic

Today I want to focus on one other method that I have used in the past to generate traffic to my websites. This method is free but very effective if you invest a bit of time.

How Online Communities Are Your Online Gold-Mines...

(Note: I used this technique to drive over 2000 visitors to one of my sites)

One thing that the Internet has provided is an outlet for people of all professions to express their feelings on any subject.

Many online communities have formed because of the ease of communication on the Internet. These have taken many forms, such as bulletin boards (otherwise known as forums), "MySpace" type websites, Newsgroups, and more.

Some of these communities receive thousands of visitors every day, some even more than that. There are certain ways that you can tap into this immense amount of traffic in such a way that greatly benefits your business.

However, before I continue I want to make one thing clear:

You Need To Become a PART of These Communities, Not Just a "Marketer In Their Midst"

Don't think for one moment that you will have any success by spamming message boards and blogs with your advertising.

Not only will this get you next to no traffic, it will give you a bad reputation.

Your goal instead should be to become part of these communities and contribute greatly to them. In return you will be greatly rewarded with new traffic, new subscribers, and new customers.

I will focus on one type of online community - forums.

A forum basically acts as a type of message board where members can come to post their feelings and opinions as well as seeking out the help of others.

Four Easy Steps To Generating Traffic From Forums

Ok, these are going to seem simple, but skipping just one of them will make all of your efforts futile. Here they are:

1. Find a forum that gets high traffic and is visited by your target market.

You can do a simple Google search for "[Insert Your Market] forum" to find the major forums. How do you know if they get a lot of traffic? Simply look at the number of members and how many posts are on the forum.

Also, make sure that it is not against forum rules to advertise in your signature. I'll talk more about this in step #3.

2. Join the forum and contribute greatly to it.

Join the forum that you have found and start posting. Answer questions, ask questions, give your opinion, and generally post good quality information.

DO NOT ADVERTISE YOUR WEBSITES! Doing this can get (and often will) get you banned from the forum.

3. Include your website(s) in your signature.

Create a signature that includes your website(s). For example, I use the following in a forum that I participate in:

Make sure they aren't overbearing, and at the same time make sure they deliver your message to the other posters.

4. Find another forum and do it again!

You should probably spend on average 10-20 minutes a day on the forum that you have already found, which leaves a lot of time for other forums as well.

I recommend finding at least two or three other forums as well and repeating the above method. Once you are more established and are getting steady traffic you can leave this method as it is time-consuming (although as mentioned above, it is free).

Video Time...

(This Expert-Selected Content is Reprinted with Permission and Edited by WorkAtHomeTruth)