Three Forum Marketing Traps That Will Get You Banned

Forum marketing can be a very lucrative strategy to make money online without needing to put in an upfront investment. After all, forum marketing is free. But, if you do it wrong, your account can be banned, which means that all the hard work you've put in has been for nothing. You need to avoid falling into those forum marketing traps. In this article, I'm going to expose three of the biggest forum marketing traps. You need to avoid these traps if you want to make a success of forum marketing.

The first trap is making comments that look like spam. These are generally promotional comments made by an unestablished poster, or they may just be very short comments. Don't look to build up your post count without making intelligent comments. It won't work. Spend some time when you're getting established to make intelligent comments, even if it ends up taking you a few minute to look up the answers to these questions yourself. This will enable you to build up a valuable reputation on the forum.

The second trap is making promotional posts too soon. You need a history before you start promoting your business and your products anywhere on the forum. Many forum administrators are wise about forum marketing and the kind of tactics that will be used, but they tolerate it in return for value being brought into the forum. You need to make sure that you are bringing value, rather than being overly promotional. I would even recommend avoiding putting links in your signature file until you've established a reputation for yourself.

The third mistake is getting into a personal rivalry with another forum member. There will always be other users of a forum that you disagree with. That's the very nature of the game. One of the main roles of a forum is to facilitate discussion, which can go in a number of different directions. Occasionally, people will post negative comments that are directly straight at you. They may even be personal in nature. Never take up with these comments by getting into a personal rivalry. This is distracting, will never end and can be a huge time waster. Instead, concentrate on contributing to the forum in a positive manner.

These three forum marketing traps should be easy to avoid, but it is amazing how many forum marketers try to take short cuts. Make sure that you're working towards a long term income. This will be far more valuable over your online marketing lifetime than any other short term strategies you may consider. Build up your reputation gracefully, so that forum users see the value you are offering and take advantage of your promotions.

If you want to make a success of forum marketing you need The Forum Formula. The Special Report will guide you through little known strategies for pulling profit from forums. You might also like to read this blog post, The Forum Challenge and leave a thoughtful comment.