Forum Marketing Tips: Setting Up An Effective Signature File

Niche forums that allow signature files are the place to be. If you find some good ones without any business categories and almost as few businesspeople, take a low-key approach offering some free giveaway or samples of special interest to the members. Your chances of acceptance and subsequent success are much better in those places when you don’t come in like a marching band.
Come to think of it, it’s that way pretty much everywhere.

Here are some ideas for your own "sig file":

If you promote an affiliate product (or even your own product), you can just copy the headline from the salesletter and then include a link to the salesletter. For example, if I wanted to promote a product like "The Super Ebook", I would copy the headline of the salesletter, paste it as my signature file and hyperlink the headline of the salesletter. Don’t worry, each forum has instructions on how to do it.

If the product is yours, use the name of the product hyperlinked. This is a good way to "brand" your product. For example:

The Super Succatosh Ebook

If you are an affiliate, you can use a "blind" promotion and not mention the name of the product. Let curiosity get the best of people who then click on your link. Or, you can create a short, sweet and controversial description of the product you promote. For example:

Adsense Arbitrage Voodoo: The dirtiest Adwords and Adsense tricks ever told.

Another thing you can do is set up a landing page (a web hosted sales page) and offer a positive review of the product you promote as well as an added bonus for people who purchase through your affiliate link, especially if you’ve used the product yourself and gotten great results. You’d need your own domain name for less than ten dollars a year for a place to put it, as well as develop your unique online presence. If you don’t already have one, try GoDaddy.

(FYI: You can design your own landing pages with a little HTML knowledge, but if that stuff makes your mind go blank like mine, I like 1800Homepage or GeteCovers for making them for me. If you need a good but cheap web hosting service for them, I think Host Gator is the way to go, and I’m not at all alone in that opinion!)

For example, if you used Slimmo weight loss pill and lost 30 pounds of fat in 3 months, you could create a sig file that says something simple like:

How I Lost 30 Pounds of Fat in 3 Months Without Feeling Hungry

And you would link that to your landing page that would say something like:

"I had tried everything and couldn't lose weight – but then I discovered Slimmo weight loss pills and I started losing fat like crazy. In 3 months I had lost 30 pounds of fat. If you purchase Slimmo weight loss pills from the special link on this page, forward me your receipt and I will send you a special report with the exact exercise program I used to lose all the weight." (And guess what – that special report can have affiliate links to exercise equipment you use ).

I obviously used a short version of what you could say here - but I think you get the point.

If Slimmo weight loss pills are extremely well known in your industry, you can use the name of the product in your signature file. Like:

Read My Case Study of Using Slimmo Weight Loss Pills And Get The Exercise Program That Helped Me Lose 30 Pounds in 3 Months

Something else that can work very well is to make a special offer for members of each individual forum. For example, if you post in a forum called "Atkins Diet Board", you can say something like:

Special Offer For Members of Atkins Diet Board

Yep, that’s all. Point that to a landing page that restates the fact that this offer is for members of the "Atkins Diet Board".

Of course, you can do the same with another forum called "Super Fat Loss Forum": Special Offer For Members of Super Fat Loss Forum. You would link that to a page mentioning a special offer for the "Super Fat Loss Forum."

Another thing you can do is to have several links to several different products separated by a "pipe" (|). There's no law that prohibits you from linking to more than one resource. Just make sure it’s neat and tidy so that you’re not drawing the wrong kind of attention. For example, you could have a signature file that looks something like:

Slimmo Weight Loss Pills Review | Lose Weight Quickly |Atkins Diet Tips | Fat Loss Workout

You can have each link point to a different landing page of yours. You can use your desired "anchor text" (a term that’s used for a search for that type of product) in your signature file.

So, if you do keyword research and you see that some specific keywords get many searches (and you can provide a solution or a product to recommend), you can use these very keywords to link to your landing pages.

Over time, more and more links will be pointing to your landing pages. Links on the same forum page, the same thread, different threads on the same forum or even several different pages across different forums where you posted are indexed by the search engines. More people will see your post, not just the forum members.

The popular forums in your industry are considered huge authority sites and they have a lot of weight in the search engines. If you don't believe me, search for 10 random terms of any kind…well, family friendly ones. You'll see that many times, some of the top results are nothing more than forum threads.

Having these sites link to your page is a great side effect of you using a well thought out signature file. Many links from different authority sites can make your landing page(s) rank high on the search engines. Keep in mind that you can modify your signature file at any time.

You can promote a different product, add another product, stop promoting a specific product, etc... If you suspect that a new product will start gaining popularity in your market (or if it's painfully obvious that this is the case), you can simply create a new landing page
promoting that product and then add a link in your signature file to your new landing page.

Similarly, if you want to target a new keyword in your market, for example "High Intensity Bodybuilding Workout", you can add the term High Intensity Bodybuilding Workout to your signature file and link to a review of an ebook about secret bodybuilding workouts from Mother Russia that build inhuman muscle mass in 1 month with only 20 minutes 3 times a week. Or whatever.

Bah-da-bing, just like that you can have hundreds of links pointing to your page. Those will grow naturally over time as you continue posting on forums.

If you offer an affiliate program for your own product, another thing you can do in your sig file is promote your affiliate program. Link to a page talking about your product, why it's good and why people should promote it. You can easily get more affiliates this way.

Use a tracking link for each signature file in each forum. You need to know if it pays you enough for your time, over time.

Use a tracking link that will be on the same domain as your page and just add a variable at the end of the link.

For example, if your landing page is:

BuySlimmo.com/WeightLossPage.html (change suffix to .php using Rename File in your web hosting account)

Use a tracking link like:
BuySlimmo.com/WeightLoss.php?source=ForumName

That page would then redirect to
BuySlimmo.com/WeightLossPage.php

You can then check your server logs on your web hosting account (easily done, really…just ask your host how) and see how many visitors came from that specific tracking link. You can use the same landing page no matter what forum’s posts are linked to it. Just use different tracking links in each forum. For example:

BuySlimmo.com/WeightLoss.php?source=AtkinsDietBoard
BuySlimmo.com/WeightLoss.php?source=SuperFatLossForum
and so on.

If you want to draw more attention to your signature file, you can write it in bold, italicized, colored or even bigger fonts. Not all forums allow it, but many do. Keep in mind that you’ll do more with less – subtlety is still key. I personally use just a normal font size and an occasional color – but that's just me.

Remember to change your signature file periodically. No matter how big the forum, after a while everyone who’d want to see it has seen it. Making regular changes, even for promoting the same product, can bring hot fresh customers.

Also, make sure your links actually work. You’d be amazed at how often forum signature links just don’t work because it wasn’t quite right. Strange things can happen between typing your signature and hitting the Submit button.

Get in the testing habit now and applying it with other methods will be a breeze!