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Have you ever run a forum posting service are they still profitable?



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Have you ever run a forum posting service are they still profitable?

Hi yeah so, forum posting. It's quite a big a deal. Very underrated and underused. But also largely abused as well. But still, it can be a good thing to do on different levels. If done correctly it can have several benefits. It can be done by yourself, for yourself. Or done for others by yourself. Or others for you. Or by you by others for others if you outsource it.

A Few Questions on Forum posting


What is forum posting?

Forum posting is as it says, posting on forums. Online community forums can be a great way to build high quality, highly related links to your site as well as targeted traffic, brand awareness, keyword ranking, CTF, DA etc. Forums are user driven so it means if you get a lot of respect on those forums, your posts, threads can go on to become huge residual money makers in time and help in other ways as said.

How does forum posting work?

Forum posting works by simply posting on forums! By finding active forums that have a lot of members in them, that are related to your niche. That you can join and then create posts and talk and interact with the members on those forums and be able to create your own posts with links to your site, services, products etc. If you have a lot of respect your threads can get a lot of views and get you a lot of traffic. When you have multiple high ranking threads on multiple forums in your niche it can really help your SERP rankings in time and help you to get more customers, clients, conversions etc.

Why should I do forum posting?

For these reasons stated. But also because you want people to respect you for knowing what you are talking about in your niche. So they are an excellent way for you to establish yourself as an expert on those forums when you are daily talking about them and sharing your knowledge and expertise. Even if you are just Googling it! Have you ever run a forum posting service are they still profitable? Eventually you gain some respect and you might be able to post a new thread with your links but if you add valuable replies to peoples threads with your answers you can put links in them such as if they are valuable, that kind of thing. And of course or just have a link in your signature area that shows in all your posts. And in time as these are indexed by Google they can often rank high for years.

You can also build some insanely powerful internal links to your forum profile on those forums too. By getting a lot of people to follow you and by posting comments and things on peoples profiles, posts, threads etc, that creates more internal links on that forum to your forum profile where you can have links to your site.
  • Establish yourself as a trusted expert authority in your niche.
  • Helps you to build trust and respect by the people in your niches community.
  • Helps build links and traffic to your site from all your posts/threads.
  • Can build high authority internal links if you do it a lot overtime.

Can I buy forum posting work and should you?

Yes sir! And whether you should is a no brainer if you want what it can bring. But getting it right is another thing. Like any industry there are good and bad sellers who provide that sort of thing. So long as you do your research and stick with sellers who have a proven track record and come highly recommended you can find someone that will understand what it is you need and the angle you want to take in your forum posting campaign. They are experts at forum posting and are able to find ways to cleverly post your links by weaving them into existing threads and that.

And if done right, in time, it can have a good effect. But you want to make sure you hire the right person or team for the job! Try not to buy those really cheap services as they often take a spam and go approach or don't put much heart and soul into their writing and talk a lot of dribble and don't say much and just post a link that kind of thing is just going to end up giving you a bad name in time. Especially if they are creating the account and posting with them using your business name or something as the username and profile of those accounts linking to your site. You could loose respect for doing a sloppy, blatant, self promotion style of forum posting!

Can you sell forum posting work as a service?

Yes! You can provide work as a freelancer providing forum posting as a service. If you already have some forum posting skills and experience and are quite forum savvy and know about forum etiquette and even the flying spaghetti monster. Then you will have a head start if it's something you already do for yourself or have done. You will simply need to start a new service and then state out what it is you'll do and what skills, experience you have and what it is people will get exactly. Such as how many posts you will create on how many forums in how long a time. How many words minimum your posts will contain, that kind of thing. Set a price and away you go! Make sure you promote your service and provide a good service when you get a sale and Godspeed to you!

What are some important things to know about forum posting?

Forum posting can be a double edged sword. What it can give on one hand, it can take away with the other too. It's a formidable beast of a thing that should be treated with absolute fear and respect and never abused or treated with contempt. It can have a lot of good benefits when used properly and in the right way. They are great ways of building related backlinks to your site which are worth their weight in gold. They can be helpful to improve keyword ranking for your targeted keywords. They can last a long time and go on to send you a lot of direct organic targeted referral traffic for many years. They can help you to gain respect from the other leaders and forerunners in your industry such as even your rivals and competitors or partner sites and businesses.

Did I miss anything? Basically, a lot of good things. But if you over use and abuse it and take it for granted. It could turn round and bite you in the bum! You don't want to get your business or a representative of your business banned as a spammer do you so you have to be really careful and respect all the rules of all the each forums you're using and try to win friends and influence people. Have you ever run a forum posting service are they still profitable?

What are some good tips to know about forum posting?

Don't under estimate it. Don't over do it. Take it easy and let nature take its course instead of trying to force it! Be smart, be positive and enjoy yourself. Take small baby steps. Even if you can do 1 post a day or a week or some other action like finding new forums in your niche to join and joining them and trying to post at least once a day and learning those forums, see who's most active, who has the respect already, who the big fish and little fish are. Get in the good books of the good people if you can. Find ways to win people's attention and favor without them thinking there's something in it for you the first time and the second time they'll be more willing to read it out and okay it. ;)

If you know what I mean!?

So yeah, that's basically forum posting in a nutshell right?

Have you ever sold this as a service?

Did you find it profitable and worth doing?

Is there still money in it and a demand for it?

Comments

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Beverly
Hey Mike! Very good coverage for one of my favorite freelance services ever!

And, you hit all the major points.

As for your questions:

Have you ever sold this as a service?

Forum posting was one of my main income earners as a freelancer on SEOClerks, along with blog comment - which is actually easier than forum posting and pays better too.

Did you find it profitable and worth doing?

If you're good at writing and very social person, you will earn well. At some point, you might want to outsource to a trusted worker, at least to take on bigger jobs. I never outsourced, though I wish I had now.

Is there still money in it and a demand for it?

Always! A new forum owner who has spent money on a forum software is serious about getting new forum members. And, the only real way to get forum members is to make your 'new' forum look busy. The best way to do that is either invite all your friends (that's what I did and it does work) or hire a professional writer, freelance forum poster to create high quality forum discussions/responses.

The only issue being, there are a lot of people trying to sell this at five cents a post and competing against those will not be easy.

For this reason, you should have a really outstanding service description, complete with examples of your writing and if possible, links to previous work.

Don't go cheap on prices, charge what you are work because this kind of work takes awhile to do and is not always as simple as posting a quick two liner. A lot of times, you will get hired for forum posts that require research. Charge accordingly on this situations.



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Lynne
I have never sold a forum posting service before but I can certainly see why someone would want to make use of one if the freelancer is a good writer. In fact I had a forum on my one website a few years back and that is how I met Beverly because I purchased some of her forum posting and blog comments services.

It is very hard as a new blogger or owner of a forum to get activity going, and nobody really wants to get involved first so to get someone that is experienced with forums to get things jump started is an excellent idea!



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RaduV
I did forum posting for 3-4 years and I did it well. I was posting in niche forums such as SEO, Internet Marketing, Freelancing, Pets, some Tech forums but I don't love them particularly, babies and nature. I had a lot of accounts made in this forums and my orders were summing few hundred posts per week which is not an easy task.
I really enjoyed when I had to populate a new forum with content. It was the easier thing to do because all I had to was to post threads. The trickier part was when I had to reply to the threads / comments because there were no other users except those which I created.
The best thing I had working as a forum poster was the flexibility of the subjects. I really enjoy not having to write all over about the same subject, same item or same niche.

To answer your questions,:
Did you find it profitable and worth doing?

Yes, it might not be as profitable as it was, it still bring a buck to my monthly income. Every dollar I get is an extra dollar to my savings. I'm not doing it as I did it before but still.

Is there still money in it and a demand for it?

Yes there still are. A new forum owner needs content, activity and comments. You don't get this without investing something. As in every business, you need something done fast you have to pay. As long as forums still exists there is a chance of profit.

Bev said that " there are a lot of people trying to sell this at five cents a post and competing against those will not be easy". It's a matter of perception and also of what does the owner. If he wants quality he will pay (for some forums I got even 25 cents for a message, quite good if you ask me) or for quantity. Quantity doesn't always mean quality.



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hitmeasap
Thank you very much for this amazing article Mike, it actually inspired me to finally write about my brand building business. You can find the four different parts in the community discussions. I even mentioned you and this article in the first part as this inspired me to write it.

And here's some answers for the questions:
  • Have you ever sold this as a service?'

My main business, brand building is all about this. For starters. - I took one thing I usually did for free on a daily basis and I turned it into a full time business.
  • Did you find it profitable and worth doing?

Whenever sales are good it's truly profitable enough to make a living off of it. At least for me. I've had this as my main business for about 3 years now. If you provide this as "simple forum posts", then I wouldn't count on it as a main business.

Things like this will always be in demand, but to be honest with you, most people aren't comfortable with paying the price for services like this. At least in my opinion.



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Cristian
I made a lot of money doing forum posting, most jobs were very underpaid When I first started offering such services the general rates were around 0.10 dollars per post. You needed to write 10 relevant posts to earn one dollar, was pretty insane actually.
In time I got to a point when I deserved more, so I asked more and buyers would still be satisfied.

Recently I've noticed a serious drop in people that buy forum posting content. Most people that contact me about this ask me to create backlinks for them on forums, but no forum owner has contacted me in the last couple of months.



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DarthHazard
I do paid posting every day but only on the side. It's not as profitable anymore as it was years ago where there were several thousand forums available to do paid posting on. Now, barely any forum owners want paid posting done on their forums because it's not profitable for them since forums are slowly dying out. You can actually make a decent amount by spending at maximum 30 minutes a day doing the paid posting. It's not a large amount at all in the end but it is good to make a nice little disposable income that you can spend on things like days out or games. For example, I do paid posting to fund the purchases of my games and electronics. That way I can keep my main revenue for much more important things like bills.



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galegatling
I sometimes do paid forum posting and my only problem with it is that, I cannot spend only 30 minutes maximum just doing it. Sometimes I would post on 2 - 4 forums per day depending of course on my mood. With that being said, 30 minutes maximum isn't really enough for me when it comes to posting on forums specially those that I am really interested with. The problem with people getting paid to post on forums is that, they would only post low quality posts and sometimes irrelevant to what the thread is all about. And that sucks to see actually.



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Corzhens
It's been more than 3 years of my main line in forum posting. The initial intention was to hone my written English but later on, I was able to join forums that pay for postings and I find it more enjoyable even if the earnings are only some coins, still that's a good consolation for the effort that I make in posting. And if you ask if it is profitable regarding your own website, I'd say yes because I know of some forum owners who are posting in other forums so they can get traffic to their own forums.



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DenisP
Well I currently do paid forum posting through several sites, and while I can't say that it is as profitable as it used to be, it is still isn't all that difficult to make some extra spending money. From the perspective of a writer, if you put real time and attention into the content you are posting on, it isn't too hard to gain the approval of many forum owners and make some extra coin for your service. From the perspective of a forum owner? I'd say that if you are strict with who you hire and set proper guidelines, paid forum posting can certainly work to your advantage with regards to gaining some positive traffic. I'd say it can still be profitable for both posters, forum owners, and owners of paid posting services



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jaymish3
i have never.I have met a few people who run forum posting services and they say you can make some good money. The reason that most websites have forums is so to help their SEO with engagement e.t.c. So if you offer a service that can help webmasters do this you can make some money. If you can post in forums with the right keywords and get traffic to that site I would say you are set and are good to go.



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