Forums are a great way to attract hungry blog visitors. We all know this and if you don’t, then listen up as forums have brought me a lot of visitors to my sites. Visitors = money! At least if we try to monetize the site. I admit that so far I haven’t done much in that direction, at least not with this site. But monetizing through forums is certainly a way to get ahead in the game of marketing.

But to be honest I have to adapt to the market and my own desire to get ahead in the blogging world. It’s good and right sharing all my knowledge for free, but then my blogging effort and the long hours spent on writing have to be remunerated somewhere.

I’m no saint and I certainly don’t spend all this time sharing with you what I have learnt so far so that you can take all this, run with it and make a ton of money. If I did intend to do this, I might as well pull the plug on my laptop, throw it in the bin and go back to the grind of 9-5 in the offline world. Actually I’m wrong in saying that I don’t want you to make money. I want YOU to make as much money as you can by what you learn from me! What I meant is that I myself need to make money from this site. To think otherwise would be stupid!

And if you are one of the people advocating others NOT to focus on income too much, then I’m afraid that’s exactly why you don’t earn any money yourself.

I need to pay the bills and get ahead if blogging should keep me afloat. And I realize that all though writing pays me a relative good income so far, it certainly isn’t enough to become financially free some time soon.

Much like you I have to find more ways to monetize myself. By the way, that’s not as a prostitute either, but as for myself - MY BRAND The Writers Manifesto and Monika Mundell.

And not to forget Blogging Web 2.0.

See, I haven’t even listed my niche’s here as some are established under a pseudo name and others are only starting to take shape in the planning stages.

But those are another story which I will blog about in the future. Lets get back to forums and how you can monetize them.

1:. The first way to monetize your site through forums is to establish yourself as a leader. How - in that you provide a lot of useful posts helping others by answering their questions on how to do things.

It seems obvious that in order to do this effectively; you need to first understand what you are talking about and second use an anchor link back to your site. Forget about links that taint readers with text similar to this "click here for more info". If you do this and choose fad words, nobody will want to find out what you are about. Be dazzling, be daring, be different than anybody else!

2:. If the forum offers a section where you can advertise a "best offer" use it to promote your own product for the best price Internet wide. Even if this means that you have to drop your price quite a bit.

The traffic you will get by using a viral follow through with your product will make up for lost income as on the back end you will earn a lot more once your product goes viral.

3:. Another often overlooked factor in monetizing forums is the fact that you can find a JV partner. Imagine the possibilities of hooking up with a like minded business partner? That’s what I have done with Terry Didcott for our JV product Blogging Web 2.0.

4:. You can link directly to affiliate programs in your forum signature. But please - please be so clever as to disguise them in some ways. if you are using the affiliate URL as they are when you join a program, others will simply steal your affiliate commission from you!

5:. Another great way to monetize your forums is to be different. If you stand out with views that sometimes differ from everybody else’s, then you have a very good chance of getting noticed. People will click on your link out of anger and frustration just to see who this "idiot’ is.

A word of warning: only commit to nr.5 if you can take the heat! And remember, always be courteous, no matter the difference in opinions.

This article is the first one in a series of "How to Monetize Your Blog" on

The Writers Manifesto.

Monika

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