Use Forums to Build Your Opt-In Lists

People love to talk. They love talking online better than any other activity that the Internet affords. You can easily find communities of people gathered in a forum setting, discussing just about any subject that you can think of....and probably a few you would rather not think of.

These forum communities are easily located. All you need do is use your favorite search engine and in the search box type in “(YourTopic) forums”. You will get a lot of hits for any forum topics you are looking for. Make your search as narrow as possible. For example; if you type in ‘dog forums’, you will get many pages of hits but if you type in ‘Poodle forums’ the hits will be limited to that narrow focus.

Visit each forum site on the results list that you get or at least as many as you can. Pick out a few of the most active ones. Remember that posting to forums is going to take your time so limit your choices accordingly – go for the top forums based on the number of ACTIVE users, not the total numbers the site claims.

The next step is to join the forum and become an active participant. You will want to post several times a week to each forum you join. Use your website address as part of your signature tag. As you get to know the members of each forum better and they get to know you better, they will happily visit your website and some will join your opt-in list.

You will be accomplishing several things by posting to forums. The first thing you are doing is helping to build your opt-in list but that is just the beginning. You are establishing your credibility and that is an invaluable asset. You are also posting your website links for search engine spiders to count and helping to raise you PR in search results.

It’s important to note, though, that most times the search engines can’t see the pages you have to log into to view – stick to those forums where people can read the postings without having to log in or create a membership just to read them.

Similarly, avoid forums that don’t require you to log-in or sign up to post your message – a board like that is just begging for spammers to post all sorts of horrible links there, and you certainly don’t want your links associated with theirs.

Using forums to build your list can be amazingly powerful, especially if you list your free gift link in the signature file that goes after every posting you make. Just remember no blatant ads are allowed in the body of your message, and make sure every post is on target, intelligent and helpful. If you spam the directories with posts just to get your links out there, you’ll find yourself locked out of the forum for good – and it’s members will always ignore your links elsewhere, too.

As with most things in life, give as good as you hope to get when usimng forums to build your lists and you should be fine!