Forum Posting and Q&A Websites

An incredible, underutilized, and completely FREE method of driving easy traffic is by using forums and question & answer sites.

What are question and answer sites? Q&A sites are basically free websites where users post questions and other users can answer them. I like to call them the social network version of discussion forums.

A few examples of Q&A sites are AskVille, Yedda, eHow, and Yahoo Answers.

Each of these sites has a health and fitness section where users will post questions about fat loss, strength training, six pack abs, nutrition, muscle building, supplements, etc that you will be able to answer.

When you head over to the sites, you will see TONS of questions to answer and you should have no problem finding easy questions to respond to and leave your masked domain at the end. (There is a strategy to doing this that we discuss in the Affiliate Strategy Guide).

There are 2 ways to generate free traffic using Q&A/Forum sites:

1. By generating traffic directly from site users who are reading through the site, either asking or answering questions.

2. Via the long tail keyword strings from the sites. These long tail keywords usually get very good search engine rankings so if you happen to post on a page and that page gets a high search engine ranking, you will get a ton of free traffic to that page that contains your masked affiliate domain.

FORUM POSTING INSTRUCTIONS

1) Head over to a few of these sites, and set up an account. You don't need to use all of these forums, simply pick 3 or 4 and focus on those.

Recommended Forums:
www.forum.bodybuilding.com
www.forums.menshealth.com
www.fitnessrxmag.com/forums
www.forums.prosource.net
www.ironmagazineforums.com
www.shapefit.com/forum
www.bodybuilding.net
www.precisionnutrition.com/members
www.BBForums.com
www.bodybuildingweb.net/forum
www.bodybuildingforyou.com/forums
www.abcbodybuilding.com/forums
www.muscleandstrength.com/forum
www.discussbodybuilding.com
www.oxygenmag.net
www.boards.askmen.com

2) Check out the forum and get a feel of what is going on. How do the members interact? What is the quality of the posts? Is there a ton of interest on the forum? Do the members know their stuff? Be sure to do your research so you don’t waste your time.

3) Read the forum rules before you post anything. Some forums don’t allow members to advertise so if this is the case your masked affiliate link will be useless. If you aren’t 100% sure, contact the forum admin and just ask.

4) Introduce yourself. It is always good forum etiquette to introduce yourself and say something good about the site and why you decided to join before you post. It doesn’t have to be long, one or two sentences should do.

5) Subscribe to and post on popular posts. You’ll want to post on popular topics because these are the high traffic areas. Also be sure to subscribe to notifications so you can reply and interact.

6) Help newbies. You can position yourself as an “authority” simply by answering newbie questions and helping new members on the forum.

7) Be original. While you want to answer questions, you don’t want to give away the farm so your number one goal should be to share your knowledge but leave the reader wanting more. If you build up enough curiosity you should get more clicks on your signature link.

8) Never blatantly advertise or post spam! Spammers almost always get banned from forms so never blatantly advertise or post the same stuff over and over. All you need to do is make a passive suggestion and softly recommend the reader about where you learned what you know and casually mention the online program you used to get your results.

Q&A SITE POSTING INSTRUCTIONS

1) Head over to a few of these sites, set up an account, and bookmark the health and fitness answer pages. That way when you return you can easily find what you are looking for.

Recommended Q&A Sites:
http://answers.yahoo.com
www.ehow.com
www.askville.com
www.yedda.com

2) Create 5 pre-made templates to use. Be 100% sure to modify each post so that you don’t post the same answer more than once. Keep each answer unique so that you don’t get flagged.

3) Take a few minutes each day to post at least 3-5 answers. Be sure to add this to your list of daily affiliate tasks, such as posting a new article via article marketing.

4) Try not to come across as a spammer, if you are salesy and your answer just appears to be pushing a product and not a genuine (passive) recommendation you will probably get flagged.

Posting Techniques

The WRONG way: "Hey guys, this is a really good post. You definitely need to buy this product....it will help you get a six pack and really lose your stubborn body fat. This is a great program. It is hands down the best fat loss ebook on the internet for sure. Go buy it and find out for yourself what thousands of others have been saying...Go here: http://tinyurl.com/blabla”

This method will never work (unless you have amazing luck) because it sounds like you are going out of your way to sell something.

Everyone's immediate reaction will be to be suspicious and not trust you. The reason this will never work (unless you get lucky) is that it sounds blatantly like you're trying to sell something.

You won't sell anything this way, you’ll lose credibility instantly, and you may even get banned from the blog, forum for spamming.

The RIGHT way: "Hey everyone, I just stumbled across this post and was reading something about this exact same topic a few days ago. I did some research after and stumbled across this cool site. I thought it was helpful... check it out....
http://yourmaskeddomain.com

This type of post will never get you accused of trying to hard sell anyone or spam because all it looks like is that you are offering some helpful information that you found.

5) Slowly build your links up over the next few weeks. If you post 5 answers per day after a week you will have 35, and after a month you will have 155. After three months you will have 465 links all circulating on high traffic websites! This should create a steady stream of buyers for you, not to mention give you a great search engine position.

6) You can post links to specific articles, landing pages, PDF reports, etc. Explain how it helped you, list the benefits, etc. For example, if someone asks a question about ab workouts, you could send them to a landing page where they can download one of your brandable pdf reports.

7) This method will take a bit of time to generate sales, and it isn’t as fast as pay per click, but if you are consistent it will happen. Give it a few months.

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