I was wrong.

After reading the email Harvey just sent out to his customers and affiliates, I learned that he has automated the whole process – making it easier for any phpBB forum owners to make money from their forum advertising.

The best thing is this software is made available for FREE.

Yes, he makes it for free because there’s a revenue sharing involved but I’m sure if you are a phpBB forum owner, you’ll love what this software can do.

The website says that the normal cost is $25 and no, I don’t know if Harvey is going to make it free forever.

With this system the advertiser is able to

• * View available dates for each type of ad
• * Book an ad for any duration that you wish to specify, even a 1-day ad
• * Make the necessary payment to your Paypal account
• * Place the ad himself, preview it and amend until it is ready. The system will automatically post it on the correct date.
• * Change it as many times as you wish to allow

While your task as forum owner, after initially setting up the advertising rates on the system, is … nothing

There is no administration for you to do.

What else does the tool do ?

• * It will notify advertisers who have paid but not yet prepared their ad if it is about to be due. Conversely it will notify them when their ad has expired, with an optional reminder about re-advertising.
• * It will provide stats for you on the total advertising income split among Gold, Silver and Featured ads.
• * It will provide stats about payments and ads submitted for each advertiser. There is an export feature if you want to do further analysis, for example to find your best advertisers. And you can even ban an advertiser from accessing the system.
• * It will use your own default ads if a paid ad is not available
• * It will notify you optionally of any ad placement or ad change
• * A MAJOR feature: you can issue free coupons for ads of any type or duration. (A coupon is a great marketing tactic, use it as a reward, bonus, sales incentive or in many other ways)

So, in all, I think this is a good opportunity for you, the phpBB forum owner, to try something which is better than Google Adsense.

Find out more details here => Forum Ad manager

That’s it for today!

warmly,

Zamri Nanyan

—

I did joint ventures and generated sales from my signature file – all after building good relationships with other forum participants.

Recently, I found a product that talks about how the author makes money from forums too. He doesn’t say it on his salesletter, but my guess before I bought the product was right. And, if you are curious to see how much he makes from his forum posts, go to http://www.onlineprofitsmadesimple.com/odp.php and see it for yourself.

There’s some points that he highlights in his ebook, but I extracted one point and make it an article for you.

So, enjoy the article that I have today!

Forum Marketing With Signature File
by Zamri Nanyan

Without a doubt, forum marketing can be one of the most effective online marketing ways to promote your product. It is free and the market is highly targeted provided that you choose the right forums to participate.

For example, if you have a product on automobile Paint Protection, you can participate in forums that talk about cars, motorcycles or boats. The owners of these vehicles would certainly be interested in the paint protection product that you have to offer.

However, you don’t blatantly advertise your products on these forums on every post in a very hard sell manner.

In forum marketing, you want to give values back to the community and at the same time, insert a small ad that subtly brings the forum readers to your website. It is done by leaving a short description of your product in your signature file together with the link to your website.

Whenever you ask, answer or leave comments on these forums, it’s like you’re participating in the discussion and trying to help the community to learn more about the topic they are discussing. If you give enough value to the community and the readers trust you, they’ll want to check out what business you have and what product you’ve got to offer. The signature file will do that and it appears on every forum post that you make. Since you are a trusted person, the readers will be more open to buy products from you.

As a quick tip, you also want to craft your signature file well so that when forum readers read your signature file, they’ll be interested and curious to see what’s of your website. This is when you write a short description of your product that spells out benefits to the readers or write something that will make people wonder that your product is all about.

However, I see some signature files are just plain simple website URL but enough to get people to check out the website. So, this is something that you can experiment yourself.

In short, this is the very basic of forum marketing with a signature file. Of course, there are lots of ways that people do in forum marketing, including spamming. I don’t recommend or encourage you to do spamming on forums, if you asked me. It’s because I believe that forums are more than a place to do advertising. It’s also a place to share ideas, mingle around with like-minded people and network.

Pick a few online forums that are appropriate for your product promotion, create a signature file and participate in discussions. I’m sure you’ll be more creative in doing forum marketing afterwards.

About the Author

Zamri Nanyan believes that anyone can make money online successfully, provided they have proper business mindset and persistent action. For more great business tips, go to http://www.zamrinanyan.com and subscribe to his “Online Profit” e-course for FREE.