Newbies figure that because internet is so big and complicated, businesses that sound too good to be true might work on net. In reality, they do not.

Look at it this way: You've got to LEARN before you EARN.

Intermediate marketers understand big picture of how things work. They know what tools they should invest in. They know what kind of traffic works for their sites. And they can judge which opportunities may work for them.

Wise intermediates still invest in education. They realize that things change and it's important to stay on top of business.

Advanced marketers probably own tools they need. (They may have even developed some tools of their own.) They may not need to spend much on marketing either - they often have affiliates who are doing lots of marketing for them.

But smart ones are always testing new marketing strategies. And I've been amazed to see that lots of these advanced marketers are attending seminars. Even ones who are doing teaching are sitting in audience for next guy. They continue to learn.

The important thing in all this is to realistically assess where you are in this cycle so that you are investing your money in right place at right time.

The learning never stops. And more learning equals less wasted money.

Jeff Mulligan has an MBA and 20+ years of marketing experience as an ad agency Senior VP and VP Marketing for two software companies, one of which was publicly traded. Jeff owns CBmall, a site that provides 15 different ways for ClickBank affiliates to earn income on thousands of popular InfoProducts and affiliate programs.

Once you’ve launched forum, invite people to join it not only through your site news section but through your newsletter as well. Make some posts with forums of which you are a member already. Maybe some of your acquaintances will join your forum and will share thankless work of promoting it and making it popular.

Ask your friends for support. Let them post announcements about launch of your forum on their sites. Later on they may be interested in linking to your forum or to some posts within your forum.

Try to be a strong and charismatic leader. You are a person who is supposed to unite people. Make several new posts every day but never post for posting sake only. Your posts should be interesting and up to date. Your answers should be polite, useful and informative… though I suspect that you will learn all this by time your forum will have been launched.

Distinguish community groups. With any forum there are usually several types of members. Some are more active than others, are probably shy or do not feel inspired enough to make some posts. This is problem that, as admin of forum, you should visualize every member of community and stimulate every person to be more active if your aim is to make a live forum on your site, not to display its existence only.

The simplest way to involve maximum number of members in some sort of discussion is to start a poll on your forum on some actual and communication inspiring topic. Let every member share his opinion. To make poll noticeable put some sort of an announcement on index page of site. You may include some poll results in announcement to make it more provoking.

Well, these are basic things you should do to make forum breathe. Yet breathing does not mean living – it’s just first sign of it. Don’t fool yourself with this sign and don’t think that forum is ready to escape from your trusteeship.

At this time forum will become rather big and will take more of your time to moderate it. This is best moment to encourage forum most active members offering them to do moderator work with some sections of your forum. Unload yourself and stimulate other, though you should be very careful with moderator offer. The work does not require some special feature but a person offered should be reliable, polite, and a specialist in field. Do not make a mistake with new moderators as such a mistake may spoil all your efforts on vivifying forum.

Mistakes

Do not start with lots of topics. It’s better to start with field you feel sure about only. A little bit later when experts from other fields join your forum, you will add some other threads. But do not hurry with it so as not to leave some posts unanswered. That is worst thing that can happen to a forum.

Do not create several accounts of your own trying to create illusion that community already exists. Your pen will be detected sooner or later and this may cause a total crash of all your efforts. Behave yourself gingerly with other forums; do not promote yours in an open manner. Such posts will probably be deleted and you will get nothing but a spoiled reputation.

Try to use hint promotion; while answering some questions make some links to your site and to some posts on your forum. In case posts on your forum are of some real help to your posts on other forums, they will probably not be deleted and you will manage to attract some new members.

Conclusion

It’s of no use to argue that a working and living forum is of great value to any site; though before starting you should be aware that it will take lots of your time and efforts to make it popular and living with its own life. Ready to try it? Go for it! And good luck to you.