Have you seen all the hyped up products claiming that you can get thousands of people to your website with the click of your mouse? There seems to be a new product popping up everyday.

Although there are many ways of getting traffic to your website, there are a few old-fashioned methods that stand out and always work for me.

I'm going to share with you one of those tried and true methods, and that is called forum marketing. This still remains one of the best ways to drive highly targeted traffic to your website. There are many businesses earning six figures annually that have been built on participating in forums.

Before joining a forum there are several things you need to know in order to make it a profitable and enjoyable experience.

The first thing you should do is make sure that the forum is active. In order to find out whether the forum is active or not, go to Google and search for "your keyword," +forum. So let's say you're advertising a tatoo removal product. You would go to Google and type in the words, "Tattoo removal forums," "Tattoo Forums," etc.

Once a list of forums show up on the search engine, go to several forums and see how many members that each forum has, when was the last post, and how many different topics are listed on that forum.

If the forum is active, then you would see that the last post would be either the current date or the day before. Anything prior to that, I usually don't bother. I like to deal with forums with a large number of members and ones where there are daily posts.

Despite the fact that you can earn a six-figure income with your niche websites using forums, you must follow certain rules in order to be successful. you must read the forum's rules and regulations before you start making any posts. Most forums don't allow you to directly advertise and they all have their own rules. That's why it's extremely important that you read those rules before posting on any forum.

Spamming a forum is an absolute no, no. Don't send people directly to your affiliate programs or flat out encourage people to click on your signature link. Please don't put your link directly in your post. Keep it in the signature.

If the administrator of the forum sees that you're spamming the forum by posting your links all over the place you will be banned from that forum. Another rule I follow is, once you sign up with a forum make sure you read the posts and contribute at least 5-10 thorough, very informative post. Then I would take a break, rinse and repeat every other day. Remember, don't just post comments in one day and disappear.

You can also get banned from a forum for "yelling" at other forum participants, or not respecting other people's opinions. You must learn how to conduct yourself in a forum by not "firing off at the mouth." What I mean by that is you must be careful of not being offensive or even using offensive language towards another participant. Be as straightforward as you can without being abusive or rude, even if you disagree on a comment made.

So How Do I Really Make Money From Forums?

You make money from forums by using your signature link effectively. When you post in a forum you must make sure that your signature, which is a little advertisement about your business has a benefit attached to it.

Since this is usually the only place on a forum where you're allowed to advertise your business, affiliate products, and services, you must make sure that you show the readers, "what's in it for them." Without that benefit for the readers, you are just wasting valuable space in your signature line because you would hardly get any clicks to your offer, website, or blog.

Here's a forum signature example that would get a high click through rate: [url=http://www.MiniMealWeightLoss.com]"Discover The Amazing Diet Secrets Of A Desperate Housewife" - Free Video Report![/url] It would actually look like this: "Discover The Amazing Diet Secrets Of A Desperate Housewife" - Free Video Report!

When some forum participants create a signature link, they just add their name with a link to their website. For example: [url=http://www.YourWebsite.com/]Mary Jones[/url] The above would actually look like this: Mary Jones. Again, it's best to post a benefit instead of just posting your name with a link to your website, blog, or affiliate offer.

One of my favorite questions and answers suggestion board/ forums is www.answers.yahoo.com. This is a place where people go to ask questions on any topic.

For instance, I put in a search on answers.yahoo.com for Xbox 360 repair "open-ended questions" and there were many open-ended questions that were begging for answers. So I went ahead and answered at least 10 questions regarding xbox 360 repair without adding any links to my resource box. Then on the 11th question that I answered, I made sure my masked affiliate link was posted in the resource box.

Although $58 is not a lot of money, I made $58 that day on that one post. So let's consider, for instance, if you have at least five post from five different niche products and five different forums earning at least $58 a day, that's $290 daily and at least $8,000 monthly. This is how quickly the money can add up. And the good thing about this is, these leads to your websites are highly targeted to what you're offering. You can't beat that.

So go ahead and join as many forums as you can, forums that pertain to your niche products. Besides making a ton load of cash, you can also make some new friends while you're at it.