Positioning and Merchandising in the outlet are a part of a process of presenting the product to the consumers. Good positioning is the key of the success in selling the product. It is important to understand that not all locations within outlet are good for the specific product.

Usual “good” positions within the outlet are:

- Near the entrance ( or in front of entrance in some cases )

- In front sides of the racks, not behind

- Before competitor

- In areas where consumers spend most of their time while shopping ( Hot Spots )

- In the eye level of consumer ( not too high or not too low )

- Next to the cashier

After getting the “good” position, the next thing that we should take care about is the “Size”. The Size means space that our products occupy on the rack in term of sales versus the competition. The space dedicated to our product should be equal or bigger than is the share of sales of our product in the market. This is “Space to Sales” rule. This rule is simple and it helps to retailer but also the supplier with the significant market share.

In some cases customers ( owners of the outlet ) are not respecting this rule, for some reason. Example, they are giving too much space to slow moving product, maybe because high stock accumulated due to low sales. The problem is that this product will not sell more proportional to extra space given, at same time some other fast moving products will not have a chance to sell at full potential. The solution for this problem is the right order in the first place. This means that we have problem with space given to our product since our customer is overstocked with slow-mover product, we can try to educate our customer to place right order for all product, proportional to their sales and potential and to dedicate right space range in the shelves according the sell-out of each brand, product or category.

Finally, when we have a good position and space for our product, it is time for the Merchandising of the products. There are several definitions of Merchandising like:

“Merchandising is effective arranging of the product in the place of sales, with purpose of accelerating the sales.”

“Merchandising is process of exposing the product in the danger of being bought.”

Effective arranging of the product means applying the group of rules to the products on the shelf:

- Corporative block ( all products of your company are arranged in the block, which give you the impact through synergy and visibility

- Space to sales to your SKUs

- Brand order, by the sales in the traffic flow ( Top selling Brand is leading your block )

- Pack vertically aligned, the different pack size on the different shelf level

- Price tags placed, with visible price ( with included VAT, discount etc. ) and product code

- FEFO Rule ( First Expires First Out ). For the products with life limit, which is usual for the FMCG product, you should always place the product with shorter life remained in front of the others.

- Promotional signs

- Keep the product clean and undamaged

Who does Merchandising? Primarily this is the role of the Salesmen responsible for specific outlet, meaning that the same person is selling the product, but also merchandising the product. In some cases, special dedicated person - Merchandiser is hired to do only Merchandising. This is quite common for supplying companies that have big share and sell-out, so they can employ Merchandiser in large size outlets Supermarket/Hypermarkets only to do shelving and arranging the products. This is justified for huge sell-out outlets. Otherwise, employees of this Super/Hypermarkets cannot do this job good enough, because other obligations.

Merchandising is different for distinguished businesses and product types. E.g. Merchandising and positioning of TV sets is done in different way than positioning of Fast Move Consumer Goods (FMCG ) like food, beverages, …

The benefits of good positioning are increased sales volume, increased number of “unplanned” (impulse ) purchases, increasing the corporate image. All this brings additional profit for the supplying company, but also for the retailer who is dealing these products. This profit can be used as a Profit Story as a negotiation tool for better position.

At same time the consumer have it’s own benefits out of good Positioning and Merchandising: ease of shopping, favorite brands at the reach of hand and less effort invested in looking for specific product within outlet.

Based on previously said, we can conclude that good and effective positioning is beneficial for everybody involved in transaction of product; the Supplier, the Retailer and the Customer.

Laurus Nobilis has 11 years of experience in FMCG business. He has been working primarily in Sales and Supply Chain. Since 2007 he is running the www.biz-development.com web site dedicated to development of managerial skills and knowledge, necessary for the business running.

Is it possible to work at home with a minimal investment?

Yes. Consider some of the skills you have and incorporate them into ideas of your own or match your skills, available tools, and time with companies that make it possible for you to learn how to tap into a paying marketplace for a sometimes unconventional at-home business.

When finances are tight the idea of working at home can be especially inviting to a second wage earner or even the primary wage earner who wants the ability to increase their take home pay.

How to get started

The first thing any potential at home business owner must do is to determine what they can make available to the public. This is not simply a matter of what you can invest, but an honest assessment of what you already have. First, determine your skills and then determine what tools you already have available. Check with non competing businesses for advice.

If you are looking at a service oriented company you should concentrate on the tools you have and those you will need to perform the service you are contemplating. For instance if you are interested in providing a landscaping service you might need a truck and various yard tools. If you were looking at a home accounting service you would need a computer and adequate software. If you’re working with a company that helps startup home business you should be able to get a list of what you need from them.

It is also important for you to check to see if there are local laws that disallow the business you are contemplating from a residential location. You don’t want to get involved in a business only to find you are operating outside the law. It may require a special permit, rezoning or requesting that the law be altered to accommodate the growing field of home-based businesses.

Great expectations

As with any business startup you will likely need some immediate capital to get your business going. In many instances you may also need to apply for a business license.

In order to get your business off the ground you will need to follow a simply business plan. Check with family, friends and neighbors first to locate your initial customer base. Ask them to keep your business in mind when they talk to their extended network of friends.

Get to the part about a paycheck

Your paycheck largely depends on your efforts in marketing and in quoting jobs correctly. If you try to land jobs by always doing the work for less than anyone else you may not make very much money, but you may stay busy. Be competitive, but don’t underprice yourself out of business. Honestly assess what it will take to do the work you are offering to do. Make sure you take into account wear and tear on equipment, the total amount of time it takes to complete the project and applicable marketing efforts. This should help you claim a paycheck that you can live with and will motivate you to continue on your journey into moneymaking from home.

Tip talk

* List your skills.

* List your tools.

* Develop a business plan.

* Learn if your business idea can take place in a home environment.

* Develop a fair pricing structure that allows you to stay in business.

* Get to work.

Home-based businesses aren’t for everyone, and there may be some red tape to remove from your efforts before you can move forward, but it can present an opportunity to develop financial growth while helping others with products and services they need.

Learn to Make Money Online, How To Make Money, and Make Money From Home at MakeMoneyFacts.

Perhaps one of the most moving moments in the Lord of the Rings movie series was when Sam looks at Frodo and says, “I just want to share the load.” Sam knew there was a burden Frodo carried and he knew there would be grave consequences if the ring weren’t destroyed.

At first Frodo rejected his help and believed that Sam did not have his best interest in mind. In time Frodo discovered Sam really was the best sort of friend and lamented his treatment of his fellow hobbit.

In an odd way this is the idea behind the fellowship of the affiliate revenue program. It may seem like an odd comparison, but these programs, by their very design, are intended to be mutual load bearing.

When a business wants to expand they often look to the development of an affiliate program so that other individuals can come alongside the business and shoulder the load of marketing and drawing in customers. When one succeeds both will profit. If one fails so does the other.

Both sides are inextricably tied to each other. Like Frodo and Sam traveling through middle earth encountering Orcs, a creepy little guy named Gollum and a rather large spider – each foe serves to hinder the ultimate success of the duo. There are others that are cheering the duo on and seeking to remove barriers to ultimate success. For the sake of our heroes we are glad to see them succeed.

The totality of the team involved in affiliate revenue is something like the fellowship. Each individual plays a role that can lead to ultimate success for all. In that respect they remain tied by an invisible yet real bond.

The business that began the affiliate revenue program needs the help of those who sign on to be affiliates. The reverse is also true.

Each participant has a vested interest the success of the venture. The fact that everything is tied together so neatly makes an affiliate revenue program one that seems potentially beneficial at first blush, but the linking of arms in a broad network serves to advance the purpose of the primary business and reward the affiliate for standing with them in the midst of growth.

For some web site owners this type of program is their primary means of residual income while others use it to supplement a smaller online store of their own. Some are successful enough to make a living through these programs.

However you wish to describe the role of affiliate revenue programs they are designed to provide mutual benefit while rewarding website owners for bringing new customers to the primary site. Each affiliate provides a portal for visitors to link through. When linking though your website you are credited with a commission or a referral bonus. For some individuals there is more to be made in affiliate revenue programs then there is with Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising programs.

You want to succeed and so does the primary site you are working with. Two people working with the same objectives remains much more powerful than trying to do it alone. Therein lies the power of this type of program.

Make A Website or Make Your Own Website in minutes with HighPowerSites.com. Sell Ebooks at BooksWealth.com.

I want life to be better for my family – I am an entrepreneur.

I like to dream big dreams and follow them – I am a maverick.

I care about other people and their needs – I am a humanitarian.

I want to be responsible to those who place their trust in me – I believe in customer support.

I believe in the power of the virtual world – I’m sold on ecommerce.

I love to make money – who doesn’t?

The world of ecommerce beings together people who share a common goal. That ambition stems from the creation of wealth through the sale of online products and services. The best at this are those who are most closely aligned with the need to balance income with a true caring for those who are or will be customers.

We should create ecommerce solutions for ourselves, but also for the customer. Our aim should not be simply to attempt to increase personal wealth at any cost.

Statistics tend to show that companies that care most for customers tend to have the best chance at long-term survival. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we all like to deal with businesses we trust.

For instance if I buy something from a hardware store down the street and they don’t treat me very well I probably won’t be going back to the store anytime soon. If that practice is normal most who visit the store will never return.

This is true in your online business as well. If you treat your customer poorly (particularly after the sale) you can bet you will never see an order from that customer again – no matter how good your future email marketing campaigns might be.

It may be hard to wrap your thinking around the idea that your online world still represents real people. These customers could represent a woman in her fifties in New York, a farmer in Idaho or a fisherman in Maine. These are real people with real needs. Sometimes their expectations of you may be extremely high, but they deserve to be heard and treated with respect.

Your brilliant ideas and maverick spirit may be meaningless if you don’t have customers to reward you for your ability to blaze new trails. Your entrepreneurial spirit may be meaningless if you can’t connect with past and present customers.

That being said, if you can connect your humanitarian spirit with the needs of actual customers you may be able to bring the entire business package together to benefit everyone associated with your ecommerce idea.

If you claim a responsibility for exemplary customer support you are engaging in a very healthy part of trust management. You can disarm unhappy customers simply by being willing to listen to their complaint and working to find a solution. This could be as simple as finding a better way to pack your product or offering innovative ways to track the progress of their order. You may be surprised to learn that many customer concerns may not center on the product itself, but on peripheral issues that can actually serve to help you improve your overall business if you commit to listening to your customers.

Make A Website or learn How To Make A Website in minutes with HighPowerSites.com. Sell Ebooks at BooksWealth.com.

An image hosting website provides access to a user to upload images which they can share with other viewers. Most of such image-hosting sites are for free and all one needs to do is just create a logon ID and have an internet account. In most cases, one can edit the images, upload them in any size and display those in the form of albums or slideshows. In the fast-paced age, such websites help friends staying across continents remain in touch or old grandparents see how their grandchildren look like. Many webmail sites also have image hosting interfaces for example yahoophotos.

Following are the generic features of image hosting sites:

1. There is a limit to the size of each image that one can upload.

2. Often there are options of multiple uploads upload at one time when the image hosting site uses a FTP server.

3. Most image hosting websites give options to edit images and view those in slideshows.

4. The user can add descriptions to the images and personalize those. The description may include keywords that can be optimized by search engines.

5. Image hosting websites also provide you with options to link your images to other websites using HTML codes, BBcode etc.

6. There are also options where one can directly upload images from camera and camera phones to the website.

How does image hosting generate revenue?

Since most of the image-hosting websites are for free, one may wonder how does it run? These websites run on advertisements displayed at the top of the page. Showing advertisement to the users help the website owner generate revenue to help buy better and bigger server space to host more images. Many websites offer specialized services like password-protected images, customizable skins and subdomains for which they may charge minimal yearly subscription fees. However mostly the cost of buying and maintaining a web space is generally is generally quite less and can be easily generated through advertisements.

Often image hosting websites also connect the users to stock photography sites where amateur or professional photographers are paid for their images if their photographs get published.

With various online business options being available, image hosting is something that many are opting for – mainly because it is easy to manage and hardly requires any technical expertise or initial investment. The demand for a web space where people can upload and share their images will always be there. So image hosting will probably never go out of business as digital revolution takes over the world. If the host can generate enough users for their image hosting website then relevant advertisements for digital cameras, scanners will also be readily available. Advertisements will ensure a steady source of income.

Know about Web Hosting:

Web hosting functions the same way as image hosting websites. Again revenue is mostly generated through online advertisements. The trick is getting enough users to sign up for your web space. Some web space ideas could be opening some portal like Facebook, news portal or blogs.

Larry McCullough has been marketing and writing on the internet for over 10 years. Owner of various websites. ImageHost Blog

There are many ways to make money online but most of those fall within three main routes for making money on the Internet. I have simplified these 3 routes from the perspective of someone looking to start or expand an online business in order to give you a general grasp of the information. As you progress you will find that some products & services will overlap into more than one category but don’t worry about that for now.

Many volumes could be written about each of these areas so I would recommend you invest some time to find out more. Right now, I just want you to get familiar with these to help you decide what type of business model you want to use as we move forward. The 3 methods for making money on the Internet include:

• Direct Sales

• Affiliate Sales

• Ad Sales

Direct Sales

This is the area that most people think of when they think of starting an Internet business. In this method you are selling the product directly to the customer and processing the payment through a payment processor of your choice such as Paypal, Clickbank or your own merchant account.

There are two main types of products you would sell through the Direct Sales, physical products and information products. Physical products can include books, shoes, perfume or anything that requires shipping. Information products on the other hand are usually downloaded or accessed online and require no shipping. Electronic products can include e-books, software downloads, Membership Websites, coaching, teleseminars, special reports, etc.

Affiliate Sales

An affiliate is the term used to describe someone who sells another company’s products and services on the Internet. There are thousands of companies that will pay you a commission or referral fee for any sales or leads that you generate.

Once you signup as an affiliate for a company, you will be provided with a special link to refer people to their Website. When someone follows this link and makes a purchase (or starts a free trial, etc.) the company will know that the sale was referred by you and they will pay you a commission. This is a completely automated process. Many people make a very lucrative living by marketing other people’s products and services as an Affiliate.

Ad Sales

You can either sell advertising space on your Website, Newsletter or Blog directly to the advertiser or you can signup with an Advertising Network like Google Adsense who gets the advertisers, sells the ad space and handles all of the advertiser’s questions & complaints and gives you a percentage of the advertising fees for everyone who clicks on the site every month.

Once you sign up with an Ad Network you will be provided with a small piece of code that you or your Web person adds to your site (it’s super simple and takes about 5 minutes). Once the snippet of code is added to your site it automatically puts text ads (like the ones you see next to the Google search results) on your site. These text ads match the theme of your site and are displayed in areas that you have chosen. The Ad Network also rotates the ads so that the ones that make you the most money are displayed most often. Google’s Adsense program is the leader in this field and many people are making an incredible amount of money with this.

Each of these three methods has its own positive features and potential drawbacks. Take a look at how all three could be applied to your business and you can turn your hobby or idea into an Internet business.

Rayne Blane wants to link to your website! No reciprocal link required. Click Here to Submit your site for Free!

Once you’ve spent a little time researching what people are searching for, you will unleash a flood of ideas you can use to develop a hit list of potential markets and product ideas. Today we are going to discuss my favorite way to turn your hobby or idea into an Internet business.

Today we are going to take a closer look at Direct Sales businesses on the internet. As a refresher, Direct Sales is the type of business that most people think of when they think of starting an Internet business. Direct sales is selling a product or service directly to the customer and processing the payment through a payment processor such as Paypal or your own merchant account. Affiliate sales could be lumped into direct sales in some instances but for simplicity we will cover that in depth later.

Once you master this type of sale, you can literally sell your products - or someone else’s product - 24 hours a day. If you have ever wanted to write a book, this can literally turn you into a best selling author overnight. If you don’t have a product or an idea for anything you want to create that is OK. You can sell other peoples products and get a big cut of the profits.

You don’t even need to create the product you are selling yourself. If you have an idea for a book or an audio product, you can post the project on sites like elance.com to get bids from providers around the world who can write, produce and market your product relatively inexpensively.

Here are some examples of successful direct marketing products and services:

E-Books

An E-Book is simply an electronic version of a book that people can download instantly. It really is the perfect product. People can buy them 24 hours a day and you never have to ship anything!

A lot of people find e-books to be good promotional tools and offer their e-books for free. The e-book usually provides some good information along with the product or service that the creator is promoting. E-books are a great place to start for many people.

There are many ways to CREATE an e-book. Notice that I didn’t say WRITE an e-book. Writing an e-book yourself is probably the longest way to create an e-book. Here are the 3 main ways to create an e-book:

Public domain – You can reformat books and material whose copyright has expired.

Outsource – There are dozens of sites that allow you to post your project and have providers from around the world bid on your project. This resource can save you thousands!

Transcription - You can interview an expert or record yourself speaking and then have it transcribed & edited into an e-book. You can also have this all done through one of the freelance websites.

Membership sites

A membership site is a site that allows people to access information in exchange for a monthly membership fee. Usually the member’s credit card is automatically charged a flat up-front fee or a reoccurring monthly fee until they cancel. This is the model used by many dating sites, DVD rental sites and it is the same model Jiggerbug.com uses to rent audio books and courses.

You no longer need to have extensive & expensive development done by a high-priced Webmaster. There are many turn-key solutions that can get your membership site up and running in a matter of days. All you have to do is add content.

To have a successful subscription site you must have extremely compelling and unique content that isn’t easily available for free. In most instances, someone just starting out doesn’t have enough compelling content to start with this type of product but there are always exceptions to this rule.

Audio Products and Home Study Courses

The popularity of i-Pods and MP3 players combined with faster internet connections and ever increasing hectic schedules have helped make recorded audio content more popular than ever.

People are also busier than ever so if you have a solution that you can deliver to them while they are driving or doing something else your chances of success are greater. People will pay you for solutions to their problems or the methods to fulfill their desires in the form of an audio product. You can make your product available on CD, cassette and even instant download.

This doesn’t have to be a Hollywood production. You can simply record and sell interviews with experts in your field, record a speaking engagement or record sessions with a client or friend. If you would like more information about creating audio products, click here.

Teleseminars

Teleseminars are conference calls where many people are connected on the same line. Coaching, specialized training or interviews with industry leaders are just some of the things teleseminars are used for.

Some people offer free teleseminars in order to get a group of qualified people on the line to sell them a related product or service. You can get more information on setting up your own teleseminars here.

Coaching & Apprenticeship Programs

Sometimes people need additional coaching to help them implement what you are teaching or providing. This has opened the door to online coaching programs via e-mail, chat and live telephone coaching.

Coaching programs are relatively simple to start-up and can be a great profit center. Some business coaching services charge in excess of $14,000 per year.

The direct marketing channel is a fantastic area to start with. It gives you the opportunity to help people solve their problems, fulfill their desires and make a nice profit in the process!

Rayne Blane wants to link to your website! No reciprocal link required. Click Here to Submit your site for Free!

The demand for digital products has increased tremendously in the past few years and is thereby easily made available at online stores as well. However, security and payment processes online have always been an issue among the potential clients in making the purchase for digital products. Google Checkout is certainly an answer to the fear of all such paranoids. This checkout process collaborates with shopping carts so as to provide customers to make a quick and secure payment with the help of a password and username at Google Checkout. Once the purchase has been made, credit cards of the customer are charged via Google Checkout, orders can be processed, and the payment can be received in the bank account of the owner of the shopping cart where purchase has been made.

Processing via Google Checkout program permits you to sell the digital products and also integrate your campaigns of Google Adwords with your selling efforts, thereby assure more powerful ads. There are several options that are made available by Google Checkout to deliver the goods digitally for order. Access to the digital content and communicating instructions to access the digital content can all be determined by you. The delivery options for digital products made available by Google Checkout are:

Digital schedule – You can determine the time when the instructions will be received by the buyer to access the digital content that has been purchased by him/her. There are two schedules for delivery that has been determined by Google for the same:

• Pessimistic delivery – This is the default method that is employed by Google Checkout for processing orders. This delivery option takes place when the digital content that has been purchased by the buyer isn’t made available to him/her for access until their credit card are authorized for the payment amount of the order placed by them. There is generally a delay of a few seconds in the time when the order is confirmed by the buyer and the time when the buyer is given instructions to access the digital products purchased by him/her.

• Optimistic delivery – This method involves receiving of the instructions to access the digital products even when a valid authorization of the buyer’s credit card is not obtained by Google after 20 seconds. If you are looking forward to sell digital products via Google Checkout, it is advisable to use the optimistic delivery options only if it is possible to withdraw buyer’s access to digital content in case Google could not authorize the credit card of the customer.

Delivery method – You may also specify the method by which instructions to access the digital content will be provided to the buyer. There are primarily three methods that are employed by Google in this context:

• Email delivery – This involves sending instructions via email. This method should be used only if your orders are submitted to Google through HTML API or if you employ XML shopping carts for submission together with the base64-encoded cart and digital signature, which will be exhibited to buyer.

• Description-based delivery – This involves providing information to access the purchased digital content in Checkout API request.

• Key/URL delivery – This involves providing URL to the buyer where he/she can access the content or provides the key to unlock the digital content purchased by them.

However, most of merchants only need a simple system where they could just add their product, place payment buttons and customers would be able to pay them. Then the product would be delivered (if product is digital – instantly) and the order information would stay on merchant’s account. Google Checkout is not really well suited for digital product owners, since you have to do many configurations on your side and not everyone is familiar with that. However, there is a solution. Click2Sell.EU (http://www.click2sell.eu) is a merchant platform and affiliate marketing network that has completely integrated Google Checkout into order processing, so you can easily start selling your products – whether they are digital or material products – within few minutes. This way you can easily start profiting online without much trouble. Happy selling!

Egidijus Andreika is a creator of Click2Sell.EU Affiliate Marketing Network. Click2Sell allows you to sell digital products online and run your affiliate program using Google Checkout. Get paid instantly, provide easy payment options for customers, deliver product immediately, recruit affiliates. Sell downloads online. Visit Click2Sell to sell downloads online.

So you’ve decided to put up a business blog. Each company website has a specific reason for putting up a blog and it’s important that you focus on that reason from the very beginning.

Some companies will put up a new blog on their corporate domain as an addition of content to the site. Some will do the same because they already have some good search engine results, but want to expand their search traffic with some long tail key phrases by adding more extensive content via the blog.

Then there are some that don’t have much traffic and have a real need to get some targeted keyword traffic pointed their way. No matter which category you fall in, you are correct. Your business needs a blog.

Adding a blog is a fairly simple process. You can install Wordpress or any of a number of great blog scripts literally within minutes. But optimizing your blog for good performance is quite another thing. There are a ton of essential tweeks you need to make with your blog in order to make it rank better in the search engines.

One good thing to consider is building your blog on a new domain. For example, let’s say that you have a website that sells a specific product, but you originally built your site using your company name. You might do some keyword research and find a word or phrase specific to your industry. One that has good search volume. If you can register a good keyword domain that fits, you may find yourself with a bit more traffic right from the start.

Optimized well, a blog built on a keyword targeted domain can benefit you much more than building it on the back end of your website. But having the domain and the blog are not enough. Now you need content, and you need growth. Gradual addition of the content and gradual growth is the key to your overall success.

Add content frequently, every day if possible. But don’t fall into the trap many company bloggers do. Don’t blog about your favorite sports team or the weather, blog about things that pertain to your topic. That pertain to your products or services. Your blog is a sales tool, not a diary. Yes, you want to talk to your potential readers in a familiar tone, but not so familiar that they know what you’re eating for dinner this evening. Not unless you are a food critic. Nope, you need to keep your focus. Go back to the reason you are constructing your blog in the first place.

Try not to stray from the prize. Your goal is new traffic. New keywords in the search engines and new clients. If you stay focused, in no time, your company blog will rule the SERP pages for your desired terms.

Don’t wait. Your company needs a blog and it needs one today. If you don’t know where to start, get help. We offer blog consulting, blog management, and blog optimization. We are the experts in the business blog world. And we can help you and your company get to the top. And stay there.

Chuck Crawford is an established e-biz expert. Founder and CEO of Crawford Business Development L.L.C., & helping countless people achieve online success spanning his 13 yr career. Clients include fortune 500 firms & personal startups. visit Business Blogs and Optimize your Company Blog or Search Engine Optimization Tx or call (559) 761-0910

Backlinks are essentials for generating organic traffic from search engines. Don’t start your link building campaign using link exchanges. They are the most in effective methods and search engines frown manual as well as automated link exchanges.

While there are many ways to build incoming links to your site or blog posts, using forums for generating backlinks is one of the proven method. Following the seven steps discussed below, you will be able to start your forum-based link building campaign without using any reciprocal links.

1. Create the right mind set. Don’t start your campaign by spamming every forum you come across during your online hours. You will soon find your link building campaign falling apart. People will pile on you hateful comments. You will also loose the privilege of using the forums.

Forums are for sharing and giving. Create a mind set of giving your knowledge to others for free without expecting anything in return. As a result, you will receive wonderful rewards indirectly.

2. Find a few popular forums related to your niche. Use Google search using the keywords forum and your topic. Pick half a dozen forums from the search results and visit each one to assess their popularity.

When looking for a forum to join you want to find ones that are popular, so look for those with a decent number of members. You also need to make sure those members are active. Go into one of the more popular forums categories and scan down the list of threads to see when the last posting was made. If you see a lot of posts made in the last 24 hours, you’ve found a forum with lots of active members.

Make sure that the forums you have found accept signatures in the postings. Jump into one of the more popular threads on the forum. Scroll down and look at the posts to see if anyone has a signature showing at the bottom of their post. The signature will have links to the poster’s site.

3. Sign up and setup your signature. Sign up with two forums and create a profile. In the profile page, setup your signatures with links to your website. Use keywords or phrase related to your site for the anchor texts of the link. If it is possible, make the anchor text bold. Never use the URL for the anchor texts.

4. Join a webmaster forum dedicated to online marketing and search engine optimization, like digitalpoint forum. By regularly reading these types of forums, you will learn new online marketing and search engine optimization techniques. Make it a point to visit at least one forum a day and post at least two messages. Don’t post meaningless messages, like ‘thank you’, ‘great post’, etc. Provide some insights.

5. Once a week, create at least one new thread in the appropriate sub-forum. Use a catchy but relevant title to grab others attention to your topic. Ask thought provoking questions so that the discussions will benefit the community. Share your knowledge by posting some insightful thoughts in the form of articles backed up by relevant links. Respond to others who post comments to your threads but don’t use ‘thank you’ messages. Don’t promote your own links.

6. Don’t send unsolicited private messages to promote your ventures. Send unsolicited private messages when you feel that the message is not appropriate for the consumption of the entire community.

7. Forums are for building community and rapports with others. Don’t offend others and exhibit arrogant behaviors. Stay cool and respond politely even if someone initiates a flame war.

Dr. Deepak Dutta has provided free online marketing tools like free classifieds and free ads sites for more than a decade, followed by article marketing and social media link building tools.