Have You Tried Pushing Affiliate Sales On Forums?

I've tried pushing affiliate sales on my forum and the results were really miserable. For some reason users just didn't respond to anything I tried despite everything I promoted being related to what my forum is about. Have any of you tried doing the same? What have your experiences been like?

 

I think I can relate with you on this. I have always had abysmal results trying to promote affiliate products and offers on forums. It might be because of the niche or the forums but I have no idea. My best strategy for promoting affiliate offers and product is through a blog post and an email list with the latter having a quicker result.

 

I belong to a number of forums where people have attempted this and the responses have been critical for promoting Clickbank products that people have to pay for. I think most forum users are adverse to other users posting in an attempt to get affiliate sales.

I think the best way to promote affiliate products in a forum is to create a forum on the same niche and have a section where you can openly promote 'recommended products', and you can place banners and links on the index page. I have seen several forum owners do this.

 

When it comes to promoting affiliate products on your website or forum one thing you have to consider is the number of traffic you have on your website it is possible that your forum does not have so much traffic that is why the conversion ratio of those paying for the products is low.

 

Try to put yourself in the position of the people who see your posts. They aren't in a forum because they won't too buy something or spend money, so most of them will regard your post as spam an advertising. There are forums that have threats like "promote a product" or "check out these offers" and stuff like that. If you post it in a thread like that, chances are higher that someone will actually click on a link since they are more likely to buy something if looking for offers.

 

I guess that's one lesson learned. If you want to promote something at online forums, make sure you're at the right forum and with people who are sincerely interested in what you have to offer. If you post at forums where people have no idea what AM is, then I guess the effort would have been for naught. Perhaps you can go to AM-specific forums, instead? Just my two cents, though.

 

I agree with what many have said here. You can't just push product into people's faces. People come to forums to chat it up. They are not looking for the next big product. It's just like the telemarketing business. When you don't ask for it; it is just annoying. I also learned the hard way.

 

Some people are trying just to promote some different product or forums not connected to its topic because they think people will say "wow, something new" and buy it. These days if we want to offer something, we have to know the product and know where we can promote it (and of course how to convice people to buy your product). It's also about niche. People won't buy something which is unpopular and only source of information is some colorful, long guide like "wall of text" on some random site.

 

URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. And good traffic eventually leads to sales.

 

By posting good content and engaging others in an open friendly way to develop a relationship is much better than just posting to sale your product, it shows you are interested in the group not just their money. Your product should have something to do with the topic and forum also.

 

I thought that you would get banned for advertising on these forums with affiliate links. I never posted affiliate links on forums because of the strict rules. If anything I just avoid posting affiliate links on the forums so I would not get accused of spamming.

 

These rules depend on the different forums. Some have topics that specifically allow you to post affiliate links, like a topic about product reviews, but it always depends on the general forum and affiliate terms and conditions.

 

If I saw someone trying to push a sale onto me I would leave. As others have said, if someone wanted to buy something they would have gone to the site, you go to a forum to discuss things and not to buy. You may click out of interest, but pushing people goes against the grain. It's like a pushy salesperson in the store, you look around and choose if you want to look or buy.

 

Well yeah, people get caught up in the thrill of "overpromotion," forgetting the fact that prospects are humans too. In other words, unlike bots that randomly scrape information, prospects are particular with their preferences. When marketing products and services, you have to take their interests into consideration and imagine yourself in their shoes.