Affiliate Marketing 103

Erik here. This week we have been discussing the ins and outs of Affiliate Marketing.

There are three basic steps to becoming a successful Affiliate Marketer:

1. Find great stuff to promote.
2. Set up the technical stuff.
3. Drive traffic to your affiliate links.

This is the third post in the series: how to drive traffic to your affiliate links.

In this post I am going to skip talking about blogging, social networking, article marketing, and all the other things you already KNOW you should be doing…

(Seriously, these methods work… you really should be using them)

Instead I want to talk about an underground traffic method (that most people ignore) that has REALLY worked well for me.

Forum Marketing.

And this isn’t your grandma’s Forum Marketing, either!

Forget wasting time trying to post helpful answers and building up a reputation…

And forget adding your redirect links in your signature and waiting around for people to notice them and click on them.

This is a little trick introduced to me by a guy named Eric Farewell and it works like a charm.

Here is what I want you to do:

1. Use Google to find five forums related to the topic of the product you are promoting.

- Make sure they are active forums, with tons of posts and threads.

- Make sure there is a link that you can use to list all the current members.

- Make sure there are at least 20 forum members with over a thousand posts.

2. Create an account at the first forum on your list.

3. Post a thread in the “Introductions” area if there is one… and introduce yourself.

4. Post two or three helpful answers or posts about your topic. No more than that.

5. Use the “List Members” feature to find those top posters again… and select 1-3 people that have over a thousand posts BUT ARE NOT moderators or administrators.

Find people that have a ton of posts but NOTHING in their signature.

6. Send them each the following private message through the forum:

Hi (Name)

You seem to be quite active (and respected) on these forums… so I wanted to shoot you a PM and introduce myself, and also offer you a proposition:)

(Put something here about the topic of the forum, your interest in it, etc. etc.)

Would you be interested in placing one of my links in your signature? I would be willing to pay you to do so…

And of course, you are welcome to review the link to make sure you are comfortable with my ethics and the information I share.

Anyways, nice to meet you and please let me know.

Cheers!

(Your Name)
(Your Email Address)

7. Repeat these steps for all five of the forums on your list.

Most of them will respond. A few may be ticked off, but most of them will be really interested…

After all, this is space that they never considered could make them money before!

Work out deals with those that get back in touch with you.

I have a few of these in place right now that cost me $50 bucks per month, and a few that cost me $100…

Either way, it’s a very quick way to have your link appear at the bottom of 1,000 plus posts on a highly targeted forum with very little work.

Forget “being helpful and gaining trust and credibility” when you can just piggy-back off the trust and credibility that someone else has already built!

I will have another one of these “underground” traffic methods to share with you tomorrow.

I hope that you have found this series of posts useful…

Feel free to post comments!

To your success,

Erik