One affiliate's story - Don't get mad, take control

[lingstar]

Hi everyone,

My name is Barbara Ling and a few years ago, I was quite active in the affiliate marketing arena. Since then, I've refocused my efforts on my own products, but did want to share the following intriguing story with you. It's how I chose to respond when I was taken to task on a forum and had my 100s of posts removed.

I always advocate, when you write a book/create a product/etc., you should always join forums about the topic and set about to make yourself an SME. I do this myself by first:

*) Creating a targeted blog
*) Adding that blog to my signature
*) Answering questions on the forum, making sure to research helpful resources to include.

Rinse and repeat that 278 times or so, and chances are, you'll start to see increased traffic to your blog. I view this as quite the win-win - I win because my name gets known, the forum wins because the readers get their questions answered, and life is truly joyous.

Or so I thought.

3 weeks ago, I was taken to task by a particular forum because my blog was deemed 'too commercial'. All of my posts were removed. I asked what I could do to have that action revoked and received no response.

Now of course, the forum owners have every right to do that; it's their forum, and if they want people to contribute but not benefit, it's their right. These things happen.

So! What did I do? Did I get mad? Well of course I did, I'm only human. But after an hour or so, I thought to myself, gee Self, you know how a good forum should be run....why don't you create it yourself and offer it to the community as well?

And that's just what I did. I researched forum software (went with vBulletin) and made a list of what I thought should be present. It includes:

Benefits for community members:

• Linking is encouraged! Fancy that.
• Blog reposting - people who answer questions can have their blogs added to the site with direct links back
• Win-win relationships with other boards - Cooperate, don't try to decimate.

It's taken some 18 hour days, but so far, the results are pretty decent. Slowly but surely by word of mouth, the visits are coming, and because I welcome both seekers and subject matter experts, I'm getting knowledgeable people posting as well.

So! The moral of the story is, if you're promoting your own product, and you're banned/smooshed from your targeted audience, don't get mad...get smart. Take control and build your own little corner of cyberspace - it might be the best thing you've ever done.

Enjoy,

Barbara

[Linda Buquet]

Good point Barbara and thanks for sharing your story.
There is another important benefit to what you did.

I used to post CONSTANTLY at about 30 forums. moderated several and had a couple where I had my own dedicated forum within theirs.

Several bad things about that.

1) All the hours and hours and hours of content I generated to help others, answer questions and give free advice - it benefited the forum owner with increased traffic and great spider food.

2) I didn't own them so could not moderate and set rules the way I'd like.

3) One forum where I had my own dedicated 5 Star forum, went out of business, so all my posts and all that work just went down the tubes. The other closed my 'paid' forum without notice and without grounds and I lost everything.

SO I too decided to start my own forum - here it is! Wish I would have done it SOONER, instead of building up everyone else's forum.

In the long run, if you play your cards right, this will be a really good thing!