Have You Considered Forum Marketing?

When you do internet marketing, the first thing you will think is...TRAFFIC! How do I generate traffic? You know that without traffic there won't be any sales.

When there are no sales, the only thing you'll earn is a gigantic goose egg. As an Internet Marketer, you will be looking at every single method to generate traffic. There are tons of methods – pay per click, ezine ads, solo ads, joint ventures and many more. Well, in this post, as the title suggests, I am going to talk about Forum Marketing. Have you ever considered it?

I do not know why some Internet Marketers overlook the forums to get new leads. Do you know that there is a forum for almost every niche? You just visit Google.com and key in "[niche keyword] forum" in the search box. For example, if your niche is about dogs, then key in "dog forum". You will see a list of forums related to dogs.

For example, you have a product talking about dog training. You can join some forums that are related to dog training. Write a post that offers your product as a solution to their dog training problems. Then, leave a backlink to your site. This will be your forum signature. Your forum signature is the thing that will generate targeted traffic to your website. Hence, make sure you create a powerful signature.

Obviously, I am not talking about success overnight. Forum marketing takes time. First, you need to build good relationships with other forum members. Make sure they feel that they can trust you. You must follow the forum rules and avoid spamming.

Before you join a forum, it is advisable to read the forum rules. Once you are familiar with the rules, make sure you follow them. Don't straightway sell your product. Make friends with other forum members. If you know a certain thing, share with them. Then, they will begin to respect you.

Forums is all about sharing ideas and helping one another. That's why, people like those who help them. The first reason people visit forums is to ask for help. Hence, help others when they are in need of answers to their problems. However, don't give the wrong information. That's why it is advisable that you are knowledgeable of the topic.

If you are an Internet Marketer like me, then visit these forums...

- Warriorforum
- DigitalPoint Forums

By joining these 2 forums, you will make more friends and you can increase your knowledge about Internet Marketing. Furthermore, you can sell your products, domains, links and many more at Warriorforum and DigitalPoint Forums.

Therefore, join a forum related to your niche and enjoy the benefits. I am sure that as time goes by, you will see an increase in your website/blog traffic. Before I finish this post, remember one thing - PATIENCE! You need patience to see success. Good Luck in forum marketing!

Make Money Online With Craigslist

Craigslist.org is an advertising website reaching more than 450 different communities. You can post almost all type of ads on Craigslist free of charge. So, there is no reason not to post your goods or services for sale on Craigslist.

What are the benefits of using Craigslist to make money?

Free, Simple and Easy
Anyone can register for an ad posting account on Cragslist with an email address. The process of ad posting is simple. All you need to do is add a picture and write an effective ad copy. Anything that is legal for sale can be advertised on Cragslist (From services and items for sale, to real estate and automobiles). You can post an ad or promote a business offer at anytime you want. Internet auction sites and local newspaper will charge a fee for an ad posting, but in Craiglist it wouldn’t cost you a single cent unless you are doing job ad postings.

Earn Extra Bucks with Minimum Effort
Craiglist is a great place for earning extra income as it lets you sell off your old stuff and things that you no long want for profit. There is not much work involved. You only need to post your items for sale and wait for the interested buyers come to you. There are groups of people actually running their business using craigslist.org. Are you creative? Can you fix cars or motorcycles? The idea is to buy automobiles, fix them up, and then sell them for a profit. Creative people are selling goods made by themselves like quilts, crafts, and etc. Marketing and selling on Craiglist is free and can be fun sometimes.

Craigslist is Better than Yard Sale
If you run a yard sale, you have to be there all day to operate your yard sale. Bad weather could affect yard sale operation. By posting ads on craigslist.org, you can ask your potential customers to contact you via email. You decide who you want to deal with. Your personal email address will be hidden and there is an option to have all questions go through a craigslist.org email address that gets forwarded to you. It is important to protect your privacy and selling your stuff with Craigslist is more private than running a yard sale.

However, Craigslist isn’t perfect for business. If you are really using it to market your business, products or services, you will have to face with several drawbacks of Craigslist.

Limited Reach
Although, Craigslist is a popular ad website that has millions of visitors browsing it’s pages. But, all of those visitors are distributed among 450 locations. This is a disadvantage of Craigslist. You can’t advertise your business or products in more than one location at a time. If you are selling toys, and definitely you would prefer to market your toy products to people anywhere on the world. But craigslist.org is limiting you on this aspect.

No Seller Protection
Craigslist doesn’t offer protection of any sort to sellers. Unlike auction websites where they usually have a set of procedures to protect both the buyer and seller from dishonest individuals. When doing business in Craigslist, you make contact with your potential buyers and wish that they will not cheat or scam you. You will have not idea whether they are honest person who really want to do business with you or they are just a criminal that is dangerous to you. You will have to meet your buyers to deliver the product to them. You can ask them to come to your home or arrange to meet at a location. It is fine to meet someone if the item is small. But if you are delivering a big and heavy item, then it will be hard for your to bring the item to the meeting location.

You will Bear the Loss in Fraudulent Transaction
Craigslist.org does help seller to keep away from fraudulent transactions by posting notice explaining how to prevent these situations. Since Craigslist.org is free, they only manage to give advice to the sellers; they don’t take extra responsibility to help protect the sellers. Unlike the auction sites that charge listing fees, as you are paying for the listing fees, the auction sites provide an extra level of safety and security. On an auction website there is recourse if someone sends you a bad check or if someone sends your payment through PayPal and then reverses the payment. But in Cragislist.org, you only find the recourse through law enforcement for a bad payment like returned check or PayPal reverse. Your chances of getting back the product you sent out is not good. You probably suffer a loss for these fraudulent activities.

Conclusion
Now that you know both the pros and cons of using Craigslist.org to make money, you can decide whether it is worth using Craigslist. When reading the advantages, you will find that Craigslist is a great website that can you help you make money and want to give it a try. But when you review the drawbacks, you may have changed your mind. So, to decide whether you should use Craigslist for your business, you need to weight the pros again cons to see whether it is right for you to make money online.

Make Money With Copywriting

People who sell digital or information products on the Internet need a sale page. They need an effective sale page for marketing their digital products. They will then go to freelance websites or search on Google to find a right copywriter to write a sales page for them.

The difference between copywriter and article writer is that copywriter is writing sales copy for internet marketers and an article writer is writing and supplying articles of numerous topics to webmasters and bloggers. But, if you are already making money online with article writing, you might want to think about doing copywriting to increase your income source.

As there are many digital products launched every month, the need for a sales page is huge. So, copywriting can be a long-term profitable home business for you.

Even you haven't tried making money with copywriting before, you should give a try if:

• You believe that you can handle the job well,
• You are confident that you have what it takes to write an effective sales page and
  
• You believe you can provide satisfactory services to the clients.

Copywriting is very important to the digital sellers; the result of a sale letter can make or break a business. I advise you sign up for some tutorials on how to write a convincing sales page.

You can start learning copywriting by reading e-books such as Sales Page Tactics and Underground Sales Letters.

Some experts say that the best way to learn copywriting is through studying and reviewing existing sales pages that are actually generating good sales for the sellers. Clickbank.com is one of the great places to find and study the sale letters that work. Just use the search feature provided by Clickbank and it will return you a list of info products sorted by popularity. These popular info products usually sell well, so you can visit their sale pages and take the time to study them to develop your copywriting skills.

How Much Can You Charge For Your Copywriting Services?

There are basically three ways you use for charging your clients:

Per sales page fee - The charge can be $200 or $5,000 for a long sale copy, depending on the name you have established in the industry. But, those who just begin in copywriting charge only $50 for their first few copywriting projects.

Percentage based on total amount of sales generated - With this setup, you will be sharing the sale revenue of the seller usually ranging from 2% to as high as 30%.

Per hour charge - If you have been hired by a online businessman consistently, you can treat copywriting as a telecommuting job and start charging per hour.

How to Get Copywriting Work?
To obtain copywriting projects, you will need to market your copywriting service to targeted prospects. You can start off by building a website to promote your service. Do some ad placements such as PPC advertising, Craigslist ad postings, etc. to attract people come to your site and have a look at your service.

You should include some samples of previous works and also testimonials from satisfied customers in your website.

Another way to find copywriting work is through freelance service websites like Guru.com and Elance.com. There are copywriting projects posted there and you can sign up as a service provider to bid for these projects.

Or, you can go to Internet marketing forums and post an ad stating you are offering copywriting service free. Some online marketers give your free service a try. If your work is good, they may spread the word out and you will be swamped with requests.