Affiliate Marketing Forums: Waste of Time Or Valuable Resource?
You don't have to spend much time on Internet marketing forums to find out that 1) there are certain subjects up for constant debate, and 2) there are certain questions that are asked over and over again.
It can make you wonder whether there's any point in getting involved in the discussions.
Is it a waste of time? Well, it certainly can be.
There are thousands of Internet marketers out there who seem to do nothing else but hang around forums and chat/argue/promote their stuff.
How do they have time for all the work that's involved in making a living online? The simple answer is, A lot of them don't.
If I could give them a piece of advice, it would be this: Stop wasting all your time asking and debating questions on forums and blogs.
Spend that time testing your theories, refining your methods, and improving your results.
Log out of your favorite forums for several hours at a stretch and get some work done.
If you're getting a notification every time someone replies to a thread, you're never going to be able to truly concentrate.
Doing the work is the only way you're going to answer that question definitively and for your particular situation anyway.
Does that mean I think there's no value in asking and answering questions? Not at all.
Forums can be a great place to get answers to your affiliate marketing questions.
However, when I see someone post a question like "What does SEO stand for?" or "How can I get more traffic to my site?" I know they are looking for answers to be handed to them on a silver platter.
How hard would it be to Google broad questions like that? In fact, if I'm feeling particularly snarky, I like to make this offer: http://letmegooglethatforyou.
com.
Their time would be better spent doing their own research rather than antagonizing other forum members who sometimes are a little brusque in pointing out that the question was just asked and answered ad nauseam three topics down.
And their frustration is understandable.
Lots of newbies are greedy for fish but turn up their noses at fishing poles.
What about those topics that never seem to be settled, such as "Is there a duplicate content penalty" or "Do the search engines really pay attention to nofollow"? You will find advocates on both sides of these issues who are determined to beat those horses to death.
But they get nowhere, because some questions will always be controversial.
It's not a good use of time to debate endlessly.
In most cases you've got to do your own testing anyway.
What works for one person may not work exactly the same way for another, especially when you're talking about very different niches.
What about promoting stuff--is that a good use of time on an affiliate marketing forum? Again, the answer is that it can be, but only if you're very subtle about it and follow the forum's policies.
Most forums will strongly discourage blatant self-promotion, if not ban you altogether.
But participating in discussions and asking and answering questions is a great way to get your name out there along with whatever links you are allowed to have in your signature file (if any).
Once you build a solid reputation for helping others, you'll come to be viewed as an expert, and you'll find that some people will follow you to your site and subscribe so they can hear more from you.
At the other end of the spectrum is forum spamming.
No one likes it, I don't know of a forum that wants it, and very few tolerate it to a great extent.
So that would be another extremely poor use of time.
People still try it, and even though it might sometimes work for them in the short term, it's never a good long-term strategy, even if you could get past the fact that it's unethical and unprofessional.
The bottom line is that affiliate marketing forums can be an excellent source of information and a great place to build a reputation, but you have to use common sense and be moderate in how much time you spend there as well as what that time is spent doing.
It can make you wonder whether there's any point in getting involved in the discussions.
Is it a waste of time? Well, it certainly can be.
There are thousands of Internet marketers out there who seem to do nothing else but hang around forums and chat/argue/promote their stuff.
How do they have time for all the work that's involved in making a living online? The simple answer is, A lot of them don't.
If I could give them a piece of advice, it would be this: Stop wasting all your time asking and debating questions on forums and blogs.
Spend that time testing your theories, refining your methods, and improving your results.
Log out of your favorite forums for several hours at a stretch and get some work done.
If you're getting a notification every time someone replies to a thread, you're never going to be able to truly concentrate.
Doing the work is the only way you're going to answer that question definitively and for your particular situation anyway.
Does that mean I think there's no value in asking and answering questions? Not at all.
Forums can be a great place to get answers to your affiliate marketing questions.
However, when I see someone post a question like "What does SEO stand for?" or "How can I get more traffic to my site?" I know they are looking for answers to be handed to them on a silver platter.
How hard would it be to Google broad questions like that? In fact, if I'm feeling particularly snarky, I like to make this offer: http://letmegooglethatforyou.
com.
Their time would be better spent doing their own research rather than antagonizing other forum members who sometimes are a little brusque in pointing out that the question was just asked and answered ad nauseam three topics down.
And their frustration is understandable.
Lots of newbies are greedy for fish but turn up their noses at fishing poles.
What about those topics that never seem to be settled, such as "Is there a duplicate content penalty" or "Do the search engines really pay attention to nofollow"? You will find advocates on both sides of these issues who are determined to beat those horses to death.
But they get nowhere, because some questions will always be controversial.
It's not a good use of time to debate endlessly.
In most cases you've got to do your own testing anyway.
What works for one person may not work exactly the same way for another, especially when you're talking about very different niches.
What about promoting stuff--is that a good use of time on an affiliate marketing forum? Again, the answer is that it can be, but only if you're very subtle about it and follow the forum's policies.
Most forums will strongly discourage blatant self-promotion, if not ban you altogether.
But participating in discussions and asking and answering questions is a great way to get your name out there along with whatever links you are allowed to have in your signature file (if any).
Once you build a solid reputation for helping others, you'll come to be viewed as an expert, and you'll find that some people will follow you to your site and subscribe so they can hear more from you.
At the other end of the spectrum is forum spamming.
No one likes it, I don't know of a forum that wants it, and very few tolerate it to a great extent.
So that would be another extremely poor use of time.
People still try it, and even though it might sometimes work for them in the short term, it's never a good long-term strategy, even if you could get past the fact that it's unethical and unprofessional.
The bottom line is that affiliate marketing forums can be an excellent source of information and a great place to build a reputation, but you have to use common sense and be moderate in how much time you spend there as well as what that time is spent doing.