MSN and Yahoo Communities (The Basics)

I’m sure at one time or another, we’ve all explored either an msn or yahoo community or both. Communities are a FREE service that allows us to build and manage, discussion groups, family sites, business communities etc.

These communities can be a powerful tool to promote your business only if you know how to use them effectively.

There are 100&s of very popular communities that allow anyone to post as many “Classified Ads” as possible. Unless you to spend hours doing this, I suggest you leave if be for the time being.

What I’d like to focus more on is “WHY” you should create your own msn and yahoo community for yourself!

See, many of the best search engines will pick up your community because of the sheer size and popularity of msn and yahoo.

Also, I see many marketers wasting a lot of time because they are trying to promote too many services or opportunities at one time. A community will allow you to add ALL that you promote into one site and then all you have to worry about is promoting that one site!

This won’t happen over night and learning how to easy it is to build and manage your own community will be posted in the next issue #2.

Before we get into that, you’ll want to join the “Top Rated” communities in the business sections. Doing this will allow you to familiarize yourself with what is “the norm” with these communities. Also, after you’ve made the necessary adjustments and you’ve prepared your own community, you’ll be using all the top communities to promote your own.

I must apologize to those who have never joined and msn or yahoo community. You&ll need to sign up for a user passport which is simply an msn or yahoo e-mail and password.

For an msn passport click below:
http://register.passport.net/default.srf?sl=1

For a yahoo passport click below:
Yahoo Passport Sign Up

When signing up for an msn community, you’ll want to click the option “READ ALL MESSAGES ONLINE”. This way you won’t fill your e-mail account with countless messages that are posted everyday… Also, click on “KEEP MY E-MAIL PRIVATE” so that you don’t get any junk this way either.

And now you have the basics of communities, please look for the sequel to this article titled:

“Building and Managing your own community”

Hawaii Forum: Popular Summer Vacation Activities

I don’t know about you, but I live in a place where you can’t really do much in summer, except perhaps shed all you clothes, stretch yourself out tight in an air conditioned room, and pant like a dog. Getting out is a punishment, and no one does it unless they are forced to. Your very survival is at stake; activities are out of the question.

But since you have your summer vacation, you&d like to spend it doing something meaningful and fun. Now what are the most popular fun things that people all over the world do during their summer vacations?

In summer, people like to get in or near the water. They look for recreational activities involving water. For example, there is whitewater rafting. What can match the thrill of paddling furiously as your inflatable rubber raft pitches and bobs dangerously, moving swiftly with the turbulent rush of water in the rapids? You have trained and expert guides to take care of you in case you put yourself in any danger. There are canoes and kayaks waiting on the sidelines to pick you up in case you manage to capsize. But still you feel the delicious threat of living life on the edge of safety. Your adrenaline pump works overtime. You feel alive like never before.

But this sort of high-octane, unrelenting extreme sport is not everyone&s idea of good fun. What do you do if you are the quiet sort of person, not particularly athletic, and dislike too much physical exertion? Well, there’s a popular water-based sport for you too – there’s fly fishing. What&s more relaxing than watching the float minute after minute as you sit coolly by, perhaps reading a favorite book or perhaps chatting away to your heart&s content with like-minded friends or family members? And when a sizable specimen does indeed swallow your bait, the kick that you get out of it is hardly matched in any other sport.
There are many more aquatic activities for your summer delight. If you&d like to get in closer contact with the waves, why not try out scuba diving? There’s a whole new world waiting for you down there. If you choose your scuba spot wisely, you&ll get rich glimpses of a wholly different level of existence – the world of fish, corals, mollusks and other forms of marine life.
For some who want to really cool it off, water isn’t quite enough. They opt for snow and ice. Skiing, skating and snowboarding are some of the most popular activities of the western world. But how do you get snow in summer? The answer is, not cheaply. There are places in Canada and also in Europe where it is possible to indulge in these activities all the year round. But whether in the Rockies or in the Alps, this will be much costlier than any of your other options. Of course, if your budget permits it, then what the heck?

My personal favorite activity during the summer is one that suits my budget best. I simply take a collection of my favorite books and movies, and hole up in an air conditioned room for a few weeks. They push the food in through small hatches, and clear up the dishes at night. Try it sometime, you might even like it!

How can I monetize my forum and start making money with it?

New forums are popping up around the net all the time, adding to the thousands of forums on out there already. Many of them will never make it past a few months; some of them become pillars of the ever growing internet community. What makes the difference you ask? The following concepts will explore why some forums become successful and how to turn the success into cash.

Forums are a place for people to exchange ideas. There are two key elements in that simple sentence, people and ideas. You need people in your forum and you need them to be talking about things that matter, things that will get others to join in the fun. This gets you to the first problem, getting people and getting them to talk. People don’t like to join empty forums so you will need to get a few friends together and start posting topic others would be interested in talking about. When your forum is small, you really need to target a niche and get a good core group of regularly posting members. With many huge forums out there you are not likely to succeed with a broad forum. You can always expand later when your users ask you to. Start small with quality content, or if you already have a forum scale it down and find a target group.
If you are good with code or graphically inclined, you should spend some time customizing the forum so people feel like they are part of something special. You need to invest some time into making your forum look professional and inviting to people in your target niche. If you already have a forum maybe it is time for a makeover. Our visual sense is our strongest sense so a redesign will make a big difference.

Traffic, traffic, and more traffic. Every website needs traffic and everybody talks about how to get traffic so we won’t dwell on it too much. We will look at how to make that traffic into cash instead. Now that you have a core group of users and your forum is looking all pretty, let’s see if we can squeeze some ads in there. Affiliate banners such as Adsense probably won’t make you money unless you have massive amounts of traffic so you are better off finding your own sponsors. Since you are targeting a specific niche of people you will have an easier time to find individual sponsors. You can use something like Adbrite where individual sponsors will sign up for your site, commission junction where you can lick niche specific sponsors, or you can implement a custom php solution, what ever you think might work best.

An even better way to make money is if you can directly sell services or products to your members. For example a forum talking about web hosts can offer web hosting directly, a forum talking about travel can offer downloadable wall papers and so on. Also a great idea is to have something like a gift shop where people can order T-shirts, coffee mugs and so on with the forum logo on it. You could also look into maybe a good drop-shipping retailer deal for arts and crafts related forums. The possibilities are so broad that we will discuss it in the next article.
For now the you have lots of work to do, target your forum at a specific niche, get a core group together and start producing some valuable content. If start seeing increase in your traffic you can start looking for advertisers or establish services for sale or get a product line together.

Give Me a One,Two,Three, and a Forum – Online Forum Etiquette

It seems that every other article or guru tip you read extolls the benefit of one program or another as the absolute best way to enhance your internet marketing business. In reality, there are many ways to boost your business online – writing articles, search engine optimization, acquiring incoming links – the list goes on and on. But what about online forums? Are they really worth the investment of your time, effort and energies?

The answer really is quite simple, YES! If you are looking for effectiveness, looking for ways to enhance your web presence in a significant way, without spending a fortune–then forums are the ticket! One of the best ways which is often overlooked is to find forums relating to your line of business and join as many as reasonabily possible. Being a frequent participant on forums can increase links back to your website, increase your chances of being seen as an expert, increase your mailing list, sell more of your product, get new affiliates to sign up, make you new friends – and the benefits get extensive.

However, there are some things to think about before you get started in a forum. Your purpose is primarily to establish yourself as a knowledgable person (even a guru of sorts). You do this through a careful etiquette and approach. Here are a few helpful hints of good forum etiquette:

Things to Help Your Business (These are the GOOD Ones!):

1. Research each forum before you join. Make sure it’s relevant to your business and see if the participants are in your target market. Look at how much traffic the forum gets. How busy is it? There’s no point in joining a dead forum with very few posts.

2. Check the forum rules before you post. Some forums will allow you to post adverts for your business while others will object. Check if you are allowed to add a signature at the end of your posts – adding

a small biography with a web link to your business is a great way to increase incoming links to your site and to get more traffic.

3. Be polite and treat everyone the way you would like to be treated. Even though you don’t meet people face to face you will build up some great relationships if you take the time to give good answers to questions, to be helpful and to respect other people’s opinions. And every post you answer adds to your reputation. Use your posts to give genuine, useful advice, not just to plug your business and you’ll soon be looked on as an expert.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice – no-one knows everything and sometimes you will need help.

5. To make the most of your time on the forums, allow yourself only a certain amount of time each day.

6. Read only the posts that are relevant and that interest you and post answers quickly before moving on. It’s very easy to spend the whole day on forums and not get anything else done.

Things that will Hurt Your Business (These are the BAD Ones!):

1. Never, ever use a post to blatantly advertise your business, particularly if the forum rules don’t allow it. Nothing will damage your reputation faster than spamming a forum.

2. Don’t go through the list of forum members, collect email addresses and send them unsolicited mail. At best you’ll be banned from the forum and at worst the owners might report you to your ISP.

3. Don’t ever get involved in a flame war (this is when a heated conversation on a forum boils over and degenerates into nothing but an exchange of personal insults). It might be really satisfying to say what you think about someone, especially if they’ve been getting on your nerves, but just imagine what other people will think of you if you do.

In conclusion, treat people online like you treat people in real life. Think of it as a networking event that’s taking place on your computer and don’t forget that other posts on the forums are made by real people with real feelings. You already know how to make friends and new contacts face to face. Apply what you already know to online networking and you could be enjoying great success with a global audience. Before you know it, you will have gain a tremendous amount of information, knowledge, networking contacts, friendships, and potential business venture partners for the future. You will be amazed at how extensive the list of benefits for forum exchange can be.

You Can Double Your Website Traffic And Sales Using Relationalship Forum Marketing

Do you need more traffic to your web site, and more sales? If you do, then you need to consider an often neglected side of web site promotion which is called forum marketing.

Most web sites make use of forums to provide the element of response from user to owner and vice versa. These forums take many forms, and include the standard forums, discussion boards, bulletin boards and currently blogs where the visitors to the web site can leave their comments on the site.

Marketing has always revolved around relationships. The basic element of relationship from the aspect of online marketing is to weave an element of trust between the potential purchaser and the vendor or web site owner. Once there is this element of trust, even the tiniest bond that has been sown between the potential buyer and seller, it becomes easier for the potential buyer to take a further step to buy the product. That is why many marketers are establishing forum boards and blogs to interact with clients and to provide support and to answer queries.

These forum boards provide a fertile ground for you to test out forum marketing for your products.

You need to compile a list of the discussion boards and blogs that are related to your product or service line that you are going to market. Then on a daily basis, visit these forums to read their postings. These forums are the best sites where newbies to internet marketing would congregate to seek free resources, or request information or advice from more experienced forumers. When you see a post where you can respond, make a brief informative post, and more importantly make sure you leave a reference to your web site in your signature line. This confers on you two advantages. Firstly, you gain a backlink to your site when you leave your website address in a much visited forum, and secondly, forumers who read your post will tend to visit your web site by following the link in your post.

Some internet marketers channel all their visitors to a squeeze page and not to a sales website directly. This squeeze page is a sign up page where you get the email address of the visitor in return for a free download of a ebook or report or software. By using this squeeze page, you gain targeted leads.

Statistics show a potential buyer would need to be exposed at least 3 to 5 times before he becomes interested to take the next step to purchase anything from you. By getting his email, you can email him on a regular schedule or use an autoresponder to channel your marketing message across.

The most important part of forum marketing is to identify a group of marketing forums and blogs related to your product or services that you are selling, from which you can then launch off. Once you have the list of forums and discussion boards, it becomes a daily affair to spend enough time to visit these forums and to post to them. Beware though, forum reading can be addictive, and you can be spending a whole lot of time on reading and posting to forums. Track your leads, and as you continue to do your forum posting daily, you will see a steady increase in your web site traffic and your sales.

Online US and Canada Shopping Forum

I believe I won’t be alone when I say that shopping take time, especially when making major purchases or trying to buy rare items. Shoppers like me do as much research as they can on the item of interest, to buy the best one available at the lowest possible price. I usually do my research on the item first, reading customer reviews, and then I look for the stores that offer the best price, after that comes the time to do my research on those stores and that’s where it gets complicated. There are great resources available on the web that offer help on choosing the right thing, but sometimes one needs to connect with other fellow shoppers and ask them something, be it their shopping experiences or just some advice.
With the online shopping revolution many stores became globally available. Even if they have physical locations only in one or two countries, they may offer worldwide shipping.

This phenomenon significantly widens the pool of shoppers who potentially could give me some advice regarding a particular store or a brand name. And since the World Wide Web was the one to globalize shopping, it is, therefore, the right place for all the shoppers to connect and discuss shopping-related issues.

While there are quite a few shopping forums, I find them very chaotic and disorganized; there are many users and no structure, making it very easy for many focused topics to go unnoticed by their target audience because of the amount of other postings and spam.

That’s when I decided to build a shopping forum that would address these issues and make it easier for people like me to seek advice from our fellow shoppers. While not everyone will appreciate the idea, I just want to let the word out, so people like me know where to go for shopping advice next time they need it.