Promoting on forums is a huge waste of time
So you think you are going to market your new site by posting on forums? Hit up a few dozen big sites? A site with 100,000 users…you gotta get a few sales/users out of it. Right? WRONG!
Here is the dirty little secret. Most forums are dead. Sure they may say they have 100,000-400,000 users. But in reality 99% of those have stopped coming. You gotta realize that forums has been around for a while now, it’s pretty easy to accumulate 100K users, when you’ve been around for 12 years. It doesn’t mean any of those people are still around.
So in reality, a huge forum like that, will have ~1,000-3,000 people online. But those users will be split across all the subforums of that site. So in reality, at most, you are looking at 100-200 views of your thread before it disappears of the front page. Less if it gets deleted for spam.
And do you know how many clicks you’ll get? 10? 20? Try 5.
Now that’s if you post as a new user. But what if you are an active member of the community? Better numbers? Sure, but not by much. I’ve promoted one of my sites as a 6 year member of the community(forum had 150K users)…this kept my thread from being deleted, and it got 60+ replies, which kept the thread on the front page for a week. Result? 800 thread views, 61 clicks.
So as you can see, forum posting is a huge waste of time, you’ll spend 5 minutes getting registered, in exchange for a few clicks…not worth it!, You’ll get better results from being listed for 3 minutes on a reddit “new submissions” tab.
Do you know who forum posting works for? Actual spammers(you know the guys selling viagra). They use this bit of software called XRumer, which does all the work for them. They type in all the info, and it goes spamming all the forums in it’s list. And unlike you, they’ll be hitting 100,000 forums at a time. They’ll still be getting 1-2 clicks per site, but they make up for it with volume.
For “regular” folks, who just want to promote their new site, forums will never give you a return on the 5 minutes you spend registering.
Now some will say, oh just post a lot on the forum, and keep your site in your signature. Build up your reputation, and the clicks will follow. But have any of you actually tried it? Sure you’ll get a few more clicks this way(~50-60 a month), but you’ll also be spending a ton more time doing this. Time that is better spent elsewhere.
Disclaimer: I’m not saying that forum posting is the only promotion method you are thinking off. What I’m saying, is that you shouldn’t even consider it as one of the methods..
