The DSM Publishing Ultimate Fast Track Tutorials Giving you HONEST step by step instructions so that YOU can make money online without falling for the scams
By
Samantha Milner DSM Publishing Limited May 2009 – Forum Marketing www.dsm-publishing.co.uk You have master resale rights to this tutorial and may give it a way if you wish. If you are not already a member join the DSM Publishing Ezine and receive tutorials like this sent to your inbox every SINGLE month. Internet Marketing really is this simple! Find out more by visiting www.dsm-publishing.co.uk
FOREWORD Welcome to your first issue of our monthly Fast Track Tutorials. Were really glad that you gave us the chance to show you our way of doing things within Internet Marketing and we are really looking forward to helping you with your online business. Our ultimate goal is to see money floating into your bank account and if it is already improving on the current amounts. We are going to start on some of the basic principles that even some experts fail to get to grips with so even if you do have a degree of experience I am sure that there will be content that you will not have thought about. We find that even after four years we come across methods from time to time that we had never even considered had tried out and thoroughly impressed us when it worked. Most importantly we will include these methods to you in our tutorials so that you can implement them into your business! All the monthly tutorials will be between 12-15 pages in length so that you can get to grips with all the information, take action on it and be ready for the next months work. Where appropriate I will include screenshots so that it is even easier to follow. We will always keep you up to date – so if we find something new that works better than an earlier method we will tell you all about it. We will also give you an overview with what it is all about so the experienced marketers can move on to the next bit if they wish. Within three months I can’t see a marketer on this course not making money. Obviously I’ll start with the basics with the idea of getting you up and running as quickly as possible. We have had a wealth of experience online and we will provide you with all the information that you possibly need so that you can make a living online. Everyday I come across internet marketers that have been around for over a year and still haven’t broken even after letting me put you through your paces you will not be one of them.
Today I will be chatting to you about the use of online forums please no jokes they really can give you the opportunity to create a great list of subscribers and it is not difficult to generate a list of about 1,000 in a couple of weeks from an hour a day online. Not to mention the fact that they are a wonderful place to generate sale after sale.
Nothing very interesting in fact this is the shortest Forum Post that I remember ever leaving. You are probably thinking why on earth would this ever help my business? A day later I checked out my statistics with statcounter.com and I had received over 79 hits on my Blog for literally a minutes work. I also have a pop up to join my mailing list on my Blog and found that I had received 20 new subscribers. From checking through my PayPal account I found out that I also had over 5 sales through my out time offer (OTO) during sign up. This meant that I had 20 new subscribers, 79 hits on my Blog and over $100 in sales for less than two minutes work! If you are limited on time don’t worry to get decent traffic through to your products and services means that all you need to do is post a reply five times a day. That’s simply ten minutes work for a great income. If you can get the sign ups with it you will be able to make money from your OTO and that is what you want. Money coming into your PayPal account as often as possible. We all have busy lives and our online business can be time consuming but I am sure like me you have ten minutes a day to offer to help others in return for building your business.
What you should also remember is that this is TARGETED traffic I only answer questions to things that relate to me or one of my products. It is a great way to build your traffic focusing on something that is at your fingertips with hungry subscribers ready for you to grab hold of. So let me talk you through it….. Firstly for the examples in here I will be using the Warrior Forum which I am currently a member of and am the best one focusing on the make money online niche. You can join up here: http://tinyurl.com/dnk5wl Most forums operate in a very similar manner so don’t worry if make money online isn’t your niche. If you are not based in the make money online niche i.e. dieting or car accessories you will need to find one that suits you so head over to www.big-boards.com and through their search facility find a forum that will fit in with your plans. You can search by all sorts of different terms so it won’t be hard to find one. The most important point to make is that the forum must allow the use of a signature so that you can showcase your talents to get the unlimited traffic through to your products or services. You will be shocked by how many people I come across that don’t use their signature file and I just feel like grabbing them and trying to knock some sense into them. Here is my current one on the Warrior Forum:
Obviously I change it when I have a new product that is doing the rounds and as you can see with the majority of the members on the Warrior Forum being newbie’s I am targeting them. I want to get as much
information on there as I can without it being over crowded our looking stupid at the same time it has to be within the rules. Only in black unless it is a hyperlink then it will be blue and it must not be more than five lines long. Instead of typing in the domain name and then the title have them so that you move the mouse over the title to display the link like I have above. With Warrior for example you can’t simply do this by copying and pasting it from word as they will not like the colour that is already in place. The easiest way to do it is to use the standard html and change it to suit your own links. Here is the html that you need to use: [url="http://link.here"]Anchor Text Here[/url]
I know html can be a lot to get your head round and this is how you do it based on my Blog link: [url="http://www.myeasyonlinepay.com"]A SEO Education For All[/url]
If you wanted any writing before it you would simply include it at the beginning: My Personal Blog:[url="http://www.myeasyonlinepay.com"]A SEO Education For All[/url]
So to round it up….. 1. Replace http://link.here with your link
2. Replace Anchor Text Here with your text 3. Put anything you want to say first at the beginning of it If you didn’t do a signature like that wouldn’t something like this look cheap and tacky? My personal Blog: www.myeasyonlinepay.com A SEO Education For All
Now back to my current signature…. As I am concentrating on the newbie field mine includes my free manuals or tutorials as some think of them and this way I am creating viral traffic back to me. At the same time I am also generating traffic through to my
squeeze page and my Twitter e-book that right now will get a lot of attention. That’s another point always keep your signature fresh and up to date as trends are often changing and you want to be offering products that people want to hear about right now. When I think about what I see discussed on the Warrior Forum the most I always find the following questions appearing at least 25 times a day the only difference is that someone different is asking:
How do I put a Pop Up on my Blog? How do I upload my files with Hostgator? How do I make my first $100 online? How do I break into the make money online niche? Why should I use Twitter? What is the point in Twitter? How do I install Wordpress? And so on….
Best of all I can offer products from my signature that can resolve all of these issues plus many, many more. When I go on the forum I will answer a few questions on the main page and then I will aim at searching for a couple more to use that are specific to the ones that I require the most links to. When I was writing this tutorial for you it was Twitter. So I simply typed in Twitter and lots of posts jumped out at me and I answered about three. I chose the ones that were most targeted to my free viral Twitter e-book. I then posted the following:
One point I would like to make about this is that I didn’t actually send them direct to my Twitter E-Book instead I sent them to my free gifts page on my main website www.dsm-publishing.co.uk/freegifts and this is the key to using your traffic and getting the most out of it. They would have ended up here after clicking on the link:
Through visiting this very page they would be able to visit the following without even touching the free gifts themselves: My home page that includes my main opt-in sign up About us so that they find out more & download our early year’s pdf Our affiliates page and have the chance to affiliate our products Our Blog link so that they can visit our Blog The Publications page with our current products Editorial services so that they can book us for work There is even numerous other links in the footer too so the places our new traffic visits is endless. Then there is also the place that they wanted to visit in the first place. They can download our free reports or buy private label rights to them. Visit my e-books page and opt-in to my mailing list and then finally on my 24 hour series they can download the Twitter ebook. If that’s all they wanted then fine they can go straight there on the
other hand they could have a great time exploring my website and part with some of their cash that will then pay for my Portuguese lifestyle. Some Warriors will post the link direct with the PDF but this does not bring traffic to you as many will not bother looking around as they have what they came for. People are very lazy and they like a quick option and if they find it instantly like that you will not be benefiting from it. Now before you actually go posting anything make sure you sort out your profile. It doesn’t need to be anything spectacular just something friendly that will grab people’s attention. Obviously include a picture and links to your products and services. If you use social networking sites include the links to them as people WILL view this profile and this is the perfect way to get traffic through to your other networks. This is where I see one of the biggest mistakes with Twitter way too many people that use Twitter and the Warrior Forum fail to include their Twitter link then I will spot a post from them on the forum. It will say something like….
“Please can you help me with Twitter I have hardly any followers” I just can’t believe they haven’t included the link in their profile as when they do it appears on every post they do and I personally add people from this method. Just because I want followers in my niche and there is no better place to find them then on the Warrior. When you place it on your profile it will show up like this:
Then all the viewer has to do is click on it and they are through to your Twitter profile. You can use this feature for MySpace & FaceBook too so if you are on these networks do use this facility. Once you have done this you are happy with your new set up you need to start posting but before you do remember that from this moment on you are someone in authority. If you like you are an expert in your chosen field. When posting don’t ask the question and then start answering similar questions as you will just look bad. We have all seen the forum posts saying…. “Help me Warriors I am earning no money can you help me make my first $250 dollars online” Then you glance down at their signature and it says…. “Find out for $47 how I made my first $100,000 online” I know this sounds really harsh but my first reaction is to fall off my office chair laughing uncontrollably. This is your one way to lose all the credibility that you have worked towards. It is like someone that is morbidly obese selling a diet and telling you that it worked for them and including a picture of their current state. You have to think as an expert and if you go down this route you simply won’t be and many will end up ignoring you and not answering your posts. When you are using the forum remember what your aims are and stick to them: 1. Never get into an argument with someone. You don’t know who
they are and how many admirers they have. For all you know it could be this big player that doesn’t post very often and that is why there post count is so low. If you do get angered by a fellow member walk away have a stiff drink and then come back an hour later and I am sure you will not make the same comment now that you are thinking more clearly. 2. Post five times a day – think about your posts carefully aim for posts that relate directly to what you are about then walk away. If you do you can have incredible traffic for ten minutes work. If you
hang around the forums you will end up wasting far too much time and you could be spending that time on creating other traffic elsewhere. 3. Ignore practically everything that you read from so called experts on the forums. A little of it will be valuable but the majority won’t and is usually from people that call themselves Guru’s but actually work in a factory for the national minimum wage. They can also knock your confidence and this can affect what you would normally post. 4. Try to post one new thread of your own a week that is aimed at your market similar to what you would put into an article but more friendly. It could be ways to be a better article writer, 5 ways to build a larger Twitter following and so on. Make sure it is at least three paragraphs long and is useful content not rubbish that people will take offence to. 5. If you have a free gift that you use as a sign up place it in the free section and then place the link to that post in your signature like I have done with my make money online freebie. 6. If you do use social networking sites let them interact with one another. Post a link on Twitter to your free product but instead of sending people to the squeeze page bring them to the warrior thread first. You are then getting it more traffic and bringing it up in the forum rankings. You can do the same with special offers or any threads that you create 7. When people reply to your thread reply back as this gives it more replies and brings it back to the top of the results in that particular forum. By doing this you are also showing that you care by replying to these comments that you have left. 8. Remember to keep your profile up to date with any relevant new products as people do search it regularly. Even though I don’t spend much time on it I have still received many views on my profile 9. Put yourself up for testimonials they are a great way to create backlinks back to you. A lot of people want them for a product that is going to appear in the special offers section of that forum so if it is a decent product a lot of your fellow members will see it and will
click through to your Website or Blog. Don’t over do it though one testimonial a week is an acceptable level. 10.Remember what you are there for don’t get side tracked by reading post after post as you will suddenly look up and realise that five hours have passed by and you haven’t done any real work. I am sorry if I seem a bit hard on this but I want you to get the most out of forums without wasting your time and energy. I have had my moments when I started out I used to spend way to long on them so I am certainly speaking from experience. Also remember that you want to spend those ten minutes on each niche that you’re involved in so if you have ten you want to find an hour and if you spend too much time on one others will miss out. Say you go on their trying to find out if the bum marketing method is still effective as you are just about to write 50 articles then you come across ten different posts with different opinions you then fail with the task you planned for the day. As you have now spent the whole day considering who was right and who was wrong without just getting on with it. My personal opinion on forums is that they are for mugs unless you use them in the correct way. Many of you know that I moved out to Portugal from England last year well I remember going on an ex-pats forum and being giving that much different information about Portuguese Social Security numbers that I felt like crying. Well this happens in lots of niches so beware! However if you give good advice people will love you for it! When you use the forums remember to think of the reputation that you want to portray and think of yourself as an expert even if you are not because that is what will come across in your writing. Don’t spend ages answering one question by researching it stick to the ones you can answer and especially those that will point directly to your Blog, Website or Products. For a final thought remember that forum posts are indexed incredibly by Google so you can even get results through the search engines from people that have seen your answer and not even heard of the forum. I remember a while ago when I used a different ID on Warrior about three years ago and I placed a freebie in the free e-books section and even
though it was passed around a lot of other places to make it viral when I typed the name of it into Google the Warrior post came up first.
NOW PUT IT INTO PRACTICE 1. Put Statcounter or Google Analytics on your main website or Blog
2. 3.
4. 5. 6. 7.
so that you can check out your traffic results. Then follow the instructions in this tutorial and check them every day Use www.big-boards.com to find a good quality forum that fits in with your niche and register accounts with them. Set up a profile so that people can find out more about you and create a signature link back to one or more of your products. Make 5 posts a day, 25 until you have hit 100 posts then drop back to 5. Make sure it is targeted to your product and don’t just answer the useless questions that will have no purpose. Never post a question about the subject you are answering as an expert to as people will laugh at you and you will never be respected. Add value and content to a thread don’t just post one line answers as it is a waste of time and will not get you any friends or build relationships with future business partners. Don’t spend hours on the forums as this is very easily done. Remember what your goal is and stick to it.
And last but not least….. 8. Go and implement it! See you next month
Samantha Milner Author – The Ultimate Fast Track Tutorials Coming next month….. Starting your affiliate marketing career with a bang – how to sell other peoples products and how to get others to sell yours and the secrets to driving traffic to your website for FREE