Can I get customers to my affiliate links if I only promote them in a forum signature?

Not on this forum, you can't. Affiliate links aren't allowed. See rule 1 here: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...bers-read.html

Hi Andrew.. People use their signature basically to generate optins with a free offer or direct them to their sales page. You can't use an aff. url to get your customers but yea you can build a lander. Offer them something free and get their optins. After that you can send them your Paid Offer through your Email marketing tools like Aweber or Getresponse whatever you using. By doing this you can build your list and get their contact forever. And whenever you launch a product or service you can send them your Offer.

Thanks.. Hope you will find this something useful.

Forum marketing can work. Just make sure, like you said, that it is very niche specific. And the words you use to link to your affiliate offer must be intriguing and make people want to click. Make sure that you are some how fixing a problem that the people that you are going to marketing too have.

mazurka hit the nail on the head about building a list. That is how you will make the real money in the long run. It is much more important to get that persons info BEFORE you send them to the offer so you can sell to them again in the future. I would much rather have their email and sell them multiple things in the future, than not have their email and only make one sale off of them.

Your proposed method won't work on this forum as well as many others. Read the specific rules for the forum you intend to use before promoting direct affiliate links, in general forums are not very friendly to this type of marketing.

Just build a landing page or squeeze page (which is better), because then you can build your list in the process. I know you're new, but please do not be short-sighted and only think about getting the sale. Building a list will pay you over and over again, and you also have to keep in mind that people seldom buy the first time they see something online. Shoving sales pages and offers down people's throats upfront is a very low percentage method that is bound to end up disappointing you.

This method can work but you need a range of promotional methods not just one ! Relying on just one approach is always a bad move. If you get the right forum this can work well but I 'd drive people to your own landing page first

Probably not (very few forums will ever allow it, these days, understandably enough?), but it doesn't really matter whether you can or not, Andrew, because to make affiliate marketing work for you, you need to send the traffic to your own landing page first.

Here's the thing: to earn significant money from affiliate marketing, you need to do three things ...

(i) Keep your potential customers returning to the sales page (because not so many people buy anthing much at their first visit to a sales page, as mentioned above!);

(ii) Make increasing sales (ideally at progressively higher prices) to the same "captive audience" who regularly rely on and trust your recommendations;

(iii) Establish the credibility and trust necessary to do both the above by earning's people respect as a provider of niche-related information.

Without building lists of your visitors' email addresses, of course, you can't do any of the three and you'd just be throwing away almost all the traffic you ever generate that doesn't buy anything immediately. And that's also "almost all the traffic you have".

You'd just be trying to fill the bath by opening the taps fully but without bothering to put the plug in the hole first. What kind of way to run a business would that be?

For most people, most of the time, it's just about as simple as that, overall.

These three threads are all more informative ...

Is it a good idea to spend some time on building a mailing list ?

Without Building a List, How Consistent is Your Income from Affiliate Marketing

Does anyone even make money online without an email list?

Forum marketing, generally, isn't what it was, anyway.

Unsurprisingly, overall, when you look at how spammy most of it is, these days. "Only a signature-link to your own site" is the way to do it, really, so that it's never too spammy, and so that forum owners don't get too fed up with you.

I've done bits of forum marketing in several different niches and in a variety of pen-names. And had some quite good traffic from it, over the years, though it's never been one of my "main traffic generators".

My overall feeling about it is that it used to be quite a bit easier about 5 years ago than it is now.

I think the "secret" (to the extent that there is one at all) is always to try to add value, so that they're pleased to have your posts there. It's taking a long-term view, but that's justified, really - because I'm still getting some traffic now from some forum posts I made years ago.


.

Forum marketing works. But you've got to be
prepared to take it the long haul.

You've got to get established in your niche to
command a good following.

You've also got to be very busy on the
forums.

And who says you can't outsource...

you can only get away with aff links in signature if the forum allows it in the TOS, you'll get banned in no time if you try it on the wrong forums..

Also, this method will only be worthwhile if you provide thoughtful comments and actually add to the discussions in the forums, spam or low quality content won't get you anywhere on forums, you need to be trustworthy before people will take your recommendations seriously! ..

A quick method to get you banned from a forum and not make any money.


Delete that PDF and come up with a new plan.

Andrew,

Many forums these days do not allow people like yourself to post affiliate links in their signature. Most of them will even BAN you from participating in their forum.

I know that a lot of newbies like yourself don't have the money for paid ads but if you can't afford even $10 per day to test with paid ads, then you should not even get into affiliate marketing.