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Traffic from Forum Signatures

Clickbank DigitalPoint forum

You belong to forums.  You’re not just a lurker – you really do participate.  You’re respected.  But you have no URL in your forum signature.

Big waste.

Lots of people totally forget or ignore putting their URL in their forum signatures.  They think it’s hardly worth their time.  I’m here to tell you the opposite.

True, you won’t get massive direct traffic from your forum signature alone.  But the value of clicks you do get are extremely high.  The catch is that you need to be an active forum participant, not just a carpetbagger who is looking to shill his/her product.  There are two reasons for this:

  1. Shilling without having some kind of forum standing is a recipe for getting your account blocked.
  2. As an active, smart forum member, you have built up huge social proof.

Essentially, others in the forum look up to you, and respect what you say.  Or perhaps you have started up threads that result in hundreds or thousands of posts (hey, it’s that YOU at the top of the thread?).  When other forum members see you, they think of you as a person of value.  So, you don’t need to push your URL.  It’s just there, and people will naturally click on it.

Social Proof = Higher CTR

Case in point.  A certain high-value member of the DigitalPoint Clickbank forum, named NCMedia, has pulled himself up through the ranks over the couple of years he has belonged to that forum.  Now he’s a successful Internet Marketer, pushing Forex and all other manner of infoproducts.

Practically all of NCMedia’s threads attract thousands of views.  Forum members hang on his every word.  Does Norb (his real name) deserve it?  Yes, because not only is he a smart forum poster, but he has achieved real success to back it all up.

Norb has stellar social proof in that arena.  To use that over-used phrase, the guy’s a rockstar.

Tips to Gain Traffic with Forum Signatures

  • START threads that people view and post on (when you start it, your post is at top – forever).
  • START threads that rank on the search engines.
  • Provide actual, helpful information – in other words, don’t just react or flame people.

Below you see the DigitalPoint Clickbank forum arranged with highest pageviews at top, going down in descending order.

What patterns do we see?  After the image, we explain…

DigitalPoint Clickbank forum

Remarkably, the patterns that result in clicks are the same patterns you find when you are writing PPC ads:

  1. Any kind of dollar amount mentioned, along with the $ symbol.
  2. Catchy typography (like question marks, ALL CAPs, etc.).
  3. Catchy wording like “scam” or “free.”
  4. Most important – promise of a “journey,” “experiment,” “tutorial,” “journal,” of any kind of day-by-day, step-by-step explanation of how to make money.

I also like to point out the “Is Clickbank a big SCAM?” thread.  It fulfills many of these conditions.  But the main reason it has gotten so many views?

Because it ranks #1 in Google for the search phrase “clickbank scam.”