People who are serious about building an online business know that traffic is the key to success. Internet forums are a great way to build traffic to your website and you can also build credibility and get great customer research for free at the same time.
Do you want to build your credibility?
Forums are full of people who have problems, and are looking for solutions. If you know the answers to their questions you can build credibility in your niche by getting stuck in and helping people.
These days people can be very suspicious of the internet so it pays to take the time out to build your credibility and help people to trust you. People who understand that you know your stuff and that you are genuinely helpful are more likely to buy from you.
Do you want to get great product ideas without spending a cent on customer research?
If you have no idea where to begin for your next product the you simply need to login to the forum and spend a couple of hours reading the threads and looking for the hot issues. Which threads get the most views, what topics are people talking about, what problems do members need to solve? There's usually a pattern which will allow you to make a note of the top ten burning issues.
All that's left is to write a short report, an ebook, or a membership site that tells people how to solve the issue or problem.
Do you want to get more targeted visitors to your site?
Nearly all forums allow you to add an outbound link into your signature and your profile page. Now this is where most marketers make a fatal mistake; they just post to as many threads as they can to try and build backlinks to their website.
The problem with this method is that not only can it get you banned from the forum for spamming, it's also the least effective way to benefit from forums. Driving targeted traffic to your website or sales page is simply a matter of taking the time to respond to people's questions and to be helpful to them and add value. Think of that signature in the same way you do a resource box on an article. By giving the other members helpful information so that they can solve their issues you are almost encouraging them to click on the link in your signature and see what else you can do for them.
If you want to build credibility in your target niche, find product ideas without paying a cent for research and increase traffic to your website then you should definitely invest some time and energy into forums.