One aspect of Internet marketing that I suspect most newbie marketers tend to neglect is the importance of participating in online Internet marketing forums.

Why are Internet marketing forums so important?

There is no better way to learn how to make money online than by interacting with the people who are actually doing it.  Internet marketing forums are filled with people who are more than happy to answer your questions or help you out with a problem you are having.  In most cases all you need to do is ask.

There is also the networking aspect of participating in Internet marketing forums.  It always helps to get to know who the big players in any industry are but it’s even more important that they get to know who you are.  Internet marketing forums are a great way to socialize and interact with these people get to get to know them on a more personal level.

And of course there is the traffic!

While you usually can’t openly promote your affiliate links on Internet marketing forums you can often add them to your signature which appears beneath all of your posts.  The more posts you add to the forum the more likely your signature will be noticed by other forum members.  If you’re lucky the thread you are posting in might even get picked up by some of the major search engines giving you even more valuable traffic to your links.

But no spamming is allowed!

You can’t join an Internet marketing forum with the goal of getting your links into as many threads as possible.  Most members can spot someone doing this right away.  I can guarantee you won’t last long if you approach Internet marketing forums this way.

When joining a new Internet marketing forum it’s a good idea to just read the new posts for a few days to get a feel for the conversations there and to see who are the most active members.

Before you start posting it’s always a good idea to introduce yourself to the other members.  There is usually a specific part of the forum dedicated to new user introductions.  Just tell everyone a little bit about yourself so they will be more likely to recognize you when you start adding to the conversations later.

Of course make sure you read and understand any forum rules before you start posting.

Once you have a feel for the forum and you’ve introduced yourself you can start adding to the conversations.  Just be yourself and try to add relative content to the conversations.  Try to avoid adding one line responses like “I agree”.

It can take some time to start seeing results from participating in Internet marketing forums.  That’s why it is important to try and stay active and visit your forums at least once every few days.  It might take awhile but the information learned from forums and the relationships built from them can become invaluable to you in the future.

And just for fun… here’s a little video I found from the 1950′s with a less than serious way of explaining how to get started with posting in forums.  Enjoy!