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2,514 Members Without Doing Anything?

by MikeRogers
7 replies
Hi Guys,

I realize this is going to sound a little nuts, but it really happened...

In January of this year, I slapped up a SMF forum on one of my unused sites more or less to test the thing and see how easy it would be to manage.

I played with it for a while and then just forgot about it until today (4 months later) when I decided to take another look at it:

Unique Visitors since Jan 01 - 3,553
Site Visits - 10,580
Registered Forum Members - 2,514

A quick look at the posts shows that they are just posting random ads for a myriad of products...

And, they're not very good!

So, it would appear that I have over 2,500 names and email addresses of forum members who could really use some sound internet marketing advice. Will they pay for it? Who knows. But I'm thinking that it would be worth a shot.

Now, I just need to figure out the best to monitize this happy circumstance.

Any and all opinions will be greatly appreciated.

Mike
#514 #members
  • Profile picture of the author ragnartm
    Try sifting through the action-takers and the others by offering them some great free ebook or what that will help them improve their marketing skills. With that done the action-takers are also more likely to buy stuff from you because they know that what you promote help them.
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    Ragnar.

    Quality over quantity. Hire me to write highly shareable, user focused blog posts or articles.

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    • Profile picture of the author MikeRogers
      Thanks, Ragnar

      I am already in the process of redirecting some of the traffic to another marketing site that I own through a "Sticky" forum post.

      I wonder if anyone knows how "kosher" it would be to make use of the email addresses for some email marketing stuff?

      Mike
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  • Profile picture of the author Tyrus Antas
    Those are probably auto generated emails used just for the solo purpose of spamming, nobody actually read those. Are you getting any organic traffic(search engines) to the forum?

    Tyrus
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  • Profile picture of the author R Hagel
    Hey Mike,

    Did you check a few profiles to see what kinds of folks you have signing up? I ask because I have a closed forum that continues to grow... because "members" keep signing up. But actually, these members are just joining to create profiles so that they can get backlinks to porn sites, Viagra, etc.

    So, my advice is to check through a few profiles to find out if you have real folks or these spammer-types on your forum (if so, they're probably using throwaway addresses and bots).

    Cheers,
    Becky

    ETA: I just realized you said they were posting ads. If you don't have an ad forum, then sounds like you're dealing with spammers (bots/non working emails).
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeRogers
    Hey Tyrus,

    Oddly enough, I am getting some organic traffic through the keywords the members are putting into their posts, including links from external pages (4 so far today.)

    Becky,

    Great points.

    It does seem like that quite a few of them are using their own addresses. My guess would be in hopes of generating leads for their products - A few, on the other hand, are obvious spammers.

    Mike
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  • Profile picture of the author netbie
    Take care with "spamembers" (viagra ...) this will load your forum with scrap content.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeRogers
      Originally Posted by netbie View Post

      Take care with "spamembers" (viagra ...) this will load your forum with scrap content.
      Normally, I would be plenty worried...

      If this were a real forum that I cared about. But it is just a "test" forum on an unused site.

      Mike
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