Despite the abundance of information available about how to make money online, there is a definite over-emphasis on how to do it with a blog – so much so that you could be forgiven for thinking that making money with a blog is the only way to make money online.

Perhaps one of the most under-publicized and often ignored ways to make money is in the world of forum marketing. I’ve always been a big user of forums to promote my products and services but the lack of information available regarding efficient techniques and strategies has meant that my efforts have been amateur at best.

I know there is a lot more money to be made with forums than the “just enough for a Big Mac” income that they currently bring me.

Hence, I was quite excited to be sent a free copy of the Essential Guide for Forum Entrepreneurs by KC Tan to review.

Whenever someone has a new idea about how to make money – I want to know about it!

And this guide also claims to tell you how to sell a brand new site for $200 and get a free PR6 link from Yahoo!

I was quite impressed with the guide, so let’s take a look at the strategies and techniques on offer to see if they will help you increase your online earnings.

Why I’m going to reveal the contents

I’ve read a lot of e-books in my time and most of them haven’t done much to excite me. Despite the promises of massive amounts of online wealth, most have done nothing more than to teach me how to install Adsense or spam other bloggers. While my experiences with them haven’t left me with the most positive impression, their abundance means that I’m always on the lookout for the “needle in the haystack” that will prove me wrong.

Most e-book sales pages are filled with testimonials about how great the book is but tell you little of what topics the books actually covers. Well, I’m going to tell you exactly what is inside the Essential Guide for Forum Entrepreneurs so you can make an informed decision about whether it is right for you or not.

Chapter 1: Forum Entrepreneur Fundamentals

The first chapter in the book takes you through the basics on how to become a credible and influential member of a forum. You may think that this seems fairly obvious and is just a case of “post often” but the Essential Guide for Forum Entrepreneurs takes you through some extremely useful tips for building trust with your potential customers.

For those experienced in forums or social networking, many of the tips may seem obvious, but for those getting started the tips will help you to save a lot of time and trouble. For example, the guide analyzes what type of avatars and user names receive the most clicks and gives you links to which threads on Digital Point Forums that you should start reading and posting in immediately.

For me, it was the stuff I do everyday. However, no matter what forum that I go to, I still see 99% of users attempting to build an online presence and making the “newbie mistakes” that the guide warns against.

Chapter 2: Monetize Your Profile

Now that you’ve used the Essential Guide for Forum Entrepreneurs’ tips for building a great profile – it’s time to make money from it!

The guide takes you through how to monetize your profile and contains some ideas that I haven’t seen anywhere else. I used to think that monetizing a profile was merely a case of selling your signature or avatar, but the guide introduced me to some new ways that I hadn’t considered before. The best part is that I’m confident that they’d make me money!

Another great thing is that the guide doesn’t just give you the ideas, but provides tips and strategies as to how to implement them effectively.

Chapter 3: Create a Product or Service Listing that Sells

This chapter looks at how to leverage your profile and market your product or service on a forum. This is the “nuts and bolts” of marketing and takes you through some tried and tested techniques for getting people’s attention and making the sale.

Honestly, this section didn’t really contain anything that you won’t find on Copyblogger or another site devoted to copywriting. What makes the chapter work is that it is devoted to applying the techniques in forums and presents the information in a concise package. You can spend days searching through Copyblogger to get the info, or you can find what you need to know in this chapter.

From my own personal experience, the marketing advice here is gold and I’ve used many of the techniques myself to get attention and make money. After reading the chapter, I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve too!

Chapter 4: Becoming a Successful Forum Entrepreneur

Scams are everywhere online and the first part of this chapter teaches you how to avoid them. Honestly, I skipped a lot of this part as I’m pretty good at spotting a scam.

However, there was useful information in there regarding how to determine if a website that is being offered for sale is really worth the asking price. Some links were provided that I haven’t seen before and I’ve bookmarked most of them.

The rest of the chapter…..

I’m not going to tell you…..

You probably think that it’s because I want you to go out and buy the book yourself but it’s actually because there are business strategies in the chapter that I’m going to use myself and I don’t want to give them away.

I’m not going to follow exactly what the Essential Guide for Forum Entrepreneurs suggests, but it has inspired me to adapt some of the ideas presented in the guide and introduce them to a new market.

And they’re money makers!

BONUS CHAPTER 1: How to sell a new site with no traffic for $200

The Essential Guide for Forum Entrepreneurs contains a bonus chapter about how to quickly build a site and sell it the same day in a forum for $200. Sounds unbelievable, right? Well, the author gives you direct links to the forum threads where his own sales have occurred and gives you links to the sites that were sold.

Flipping sites is definitely a proven money maker and this chapter contains some techniques that I’m going to implement on some unused domains that I own.

Although the tactics presented are a little “black hat”, the proof of their money making potential is enough to inspire me to give them a try.

BONUS CHAPTER 2: Who wants a free one-way PR6 link from Yahoo?

The title of the chapter says it all! I’ll be getting one!

Make money with the affiliate program

An e-book isn’t an e-book without an affiliate program attached to it and the Essential Guide for Forum Entrepreneurs has one where you can earn 50% of all sales that you refer.

Earning 50% means that you’d just have to make two sales to earn back the price of the book and if you follow the tips in the book, you should be able to make those sales pretty quickly.

I learned some new tricks

Not all of the information in the Essential Guide for Forum Entrepreneurs was ground-breaking or new to me, but I did learn some new tricks and money making ideas that I’m already starting to utilize.

If I make money from just one of those ideas it would make the guide a worthwhile investment and as links are provided to the forum threads where the author is putting the techniques to work, you can easily see how the ideas operate in “the real world”.

I learned some new things about making money, so I’m going to recommend the Essential Guide for Forum Entrepreneurs if you’re looking to get into the world of forum marketing or looking for some new techniques to help you make money online.

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