Forums

Another excellent way to get traffic - in smaller volumes but usually higher quality - is to become active in the many on-line forums that exist.

There are lots of places on the internet where people with shared interests get together, and for every 1 you see posting messages, there will be 100 or 1000 "lurkers" - people who read the messages but never post anything themselves.

Promotion via these forums can take two forms:

Overt

Posting a blatant "come and see this" advertisement is frowned upon in the vast majority of forums. Don't do it - the backlash and alienation will not be worth the publicity.

However ...
Including the URL of your site along with a short - 1 or 2 line - description, is normally entirely acceptable. This is still overtly publicising your site, but you can only do it when/if you post a useful message.

Covert

If you are answering a question - and providing genuine, useful information - it would be foolish not to point to the useful resources on your site. So ...

"Come to my site and buy books on health care - and you too will soon be feeling GREAT!!!!!!!"

... is going to make you unpopular and looks really cheap.

On the other hand:

Anne

I saw your question about your son and his food allergies.

I'm not an expert on the subject, but I just did a search
on my site and found a list of over 20 books dealing with
the subject - many of them have been reviewed and rated by
people who have read and used them. I hope you can find 
something of interest there if you want to pursue this away
from the computer!

The web address for the search is:
www.dontexist.com/healthyliving/books/

Best Regards

Stewart
Stewart@madeuphealthylivingdomain.com

Healthy Living is a fantastic place to look for a better
life - book store, product reviews, latest news, and live
discussion areas.

How do you feel about that? It took a deal longer to type but think about what it has done:

• Established you as a good, helpful person - a resource.
• Demonstrated an interest in the subject.
• Shown how your site can practically aid this community.
• Placed a 3 line ad in front of 100s or 1000s of people.
• Filed a reference to your site in an archive that will be stored and consulted for years to come.

Not bad for a few minutes work eh?

If you build up an amount of good credits with this kind of post - better still if you make regular posts that have no site or product links at all - the community will be more likely to cut you some slack in the future if you make a more overtly commercial post.

But always remember - these communities can be very insular, cliquish places - always tread carefully and err on the side of caution.

Finally - remember that you also want to create your own "community" and on-line forum, so always look for opportunities to move discussions about. For example, if you see something especially relevant to your site on another forum, post or privately email the writer and ask them to consider posting on your forum too. As well as creating another interesting thread for your site forum, you may recruit another regular visitor/customer.

If there is a question in your community that no-one seems able to help with - go to another forum and invite the folks there to come over and help out.

Example Forum Sites to Visit

Askme.com
Yahoo clubs
About.com
Newsgroups (via Deja.com)
Be especially careful about commercial posts in newsgroups. I would strongly suggest signature advertising only. A great place however to cross-post questions from your forum.