As an online marketer, you face the challenge of building trust and loyalty without the benefit of a physical handshake, a face-to-face meeting, or even a smile. To this end online forums can provide an excellent way to build meaningful relationships with people and attract new customers.

By joining a forum in your area of expertise, you gain access to a community that shares your interests as well as a pool of potential customers. There are countless forums dealing with just about any topic imaginable.  The vast majority of forums do not charge you a fee to register or post messages.  Many allow you to include with your posts self-promotional “signatures” that you can use to promote your business and link to your website.

A good way to locate a forum relevant to your line of business is to do a keyword search using one of the major search engines.  Why a major search engine?  A Google search for “website marketing forum,” for example, will not only return dozens of relevant forums on website marketing, but will also give you an indication of how highly they are regarded by the search engine giant, as gauged by how high they rank for that key phrase.  Forums that rank higher on the search engine result pages (SERPs) are the ones of which you’ll want to become a member.

Forums allow you to share knowledge and gain reputation as an expert in your field.  Offering concrete advices that are immediately useful to other people is an especially effective marketing technique. Once you’ve gained credibility in your field, you will be sought after for your professional expertise without your having to promote yourself.

Participating in forums is also an excellent way to humanize yourself and your business.  When people deal with you, they’ll know that they’re dealing with a real person, not a nameless, faceless business entity.  By staking your reputation online, you demonstrate that you are willing to accept some degree of accountability for your actions.

If you’re a generally honest and agreeable person in the real life, there is no reason to hide behind a company name when conducting business online. The personal qualities that make you likable in the real world will also make you likable in cyberspace.  Indeed, establishing meaningful relationships online is a lot like making friends in the real world. After all, on the other side of the terminal is a real person with real emotions just like you.

Another key to meaningful online relationships is to create an atmosphere of openness and transparency.  Although you normally use a nickname to start and respond to posts in public forums, you should use your real name in private correspondences. It is good practice to begin your messages with a salutation, addressing them by their real name whenever possible. A little courtesy can go a long way in building loyalty and trust.

Apart from selling your personal qualities, you must have something of value to offer to people– and at prices that are fair to everyone! On a venue where your personal reputation is not at stake, you can price a widget for any amount you want and hope someone will come along and buy it.  When you do business on forums, however, you must be extra value-conscious when pricing your product or service. If you overprice your widget, you risk receiving flames from other members that could harm your reputation. This is why it’s so important to research what other members are charging for a similar widget and to price yours competitively.  Often you’ll end up charging lower prices to members of your forum than to other customers with whom you have not developed as close a relationship for the same widget.

Building positive relationships is about making people feel important. Just as you want to feel good for having sold your product or service, people want to feel good for having bought it. This is why it is so important to promptly answer their questions and attend to their concerns. Listen to their inputs and incorporate their ideas into your business practices.  This is how you make your customers a part of your team.  It’s not a stretch to speak of your customer as a member of your team. When you really think about it, no business can exist without its customers.  Teamwork is not limited to interacting with other members of your company.  It also takes teamwork to build a constructive, mutually beneficial relationship between you and your customers.

Another way we can register our site to some web directories. The Yahoo! Directory is one of the most common of the Web Directories being used by online business owners through out the globe. There are other online business directories resources such as the Open Directory Project and Directory Archives which can go a long way in helping you get hold of the links that you are seeking. It is the big one.

If you want to put your website to the some web directories, you can select the category related to your site. Fill out the description and title of the web as good as you can. After all the necessary information filled in, please submit your website.

There are many web directory you can choose, may be you can try one of the free web directories below as the alternative choice.

Jasmine directory offers many interesting alternative. We will find friendly web directory. All links are direct. All categories & subcategories contain a detailed relevant description and an appealing image, in order to avoid becoming just another business web directory. Up to 5 extra links, you can submit extra 5 deep links which can be some of the most accessed pages of your website. Automatic thumbs, Jasmine web directory instantly collects two thumb shots of your website to visually enhance your listing. And many benefits you can get in there.

Another is Max directory, you can also visit this one as a second choice.

If your site has registered to some web directories, these indirectly simplify the reader in finding your site, and also you get profitable traffic.

With traffic comes a potential customer which basically means sales which in turn means profit. While many sites have collapsed in the past with the downturn of many internet based business, many smaller sites have generated good money by concentrating on a certain niche and some subniches.

This is a reason why e-commerce site laser target certain groups of people and drive them to their site to showcase their sites and products. Precision marketing is essential so that you could count on all the traffic on your site as potential customers.

Using Money to Make Money

It’s a common business notion that if you want to make money, you have to spend money. One good way of spending money for business gain is through advertising. Advertising brings in the people because through advertising, they know that there is such a company or product in existence. With the right type of advertising, you can see the spurt of traffic growth to your site. With a high volume of traffic, even if only a small portion or percentage turns out to be buying customers it is still a good average of profit generating income.

Right now, there is no other advertising scheme that would be worth every cent than using Google’s Adwords. The surge in popularity of Google’s Adwords is very evident as you can see so many sites sporting this ad scheme.

In using Google’s Adwords, you pay a certain fee depending on the number of keywords your ad is keyword sensitive to. Each time a person does a search in Google, the keyword or keywords use generate ads in the side of Google which are generated by the keywords they have assigned for their ads.

This method laser targets the traffic a site wants for their site. This also ensures that you are readily visible in the first page of a search result. Paying Google for this ad scheme ensures that your target group of people sees your ads. You drive your laser targeted traffic to your site which provides for their needs and wants. You can also be sure that you can meet their demands and needs.

Aside from Google, you can also be featured in their other search networks, these includes sites like, AskJeeves, AOL Search and Netscape. These sites also show Adwords ads that react to searches done by visitors. There are also content networks, non-search engine sites that feature Google Adwords, which will also carry your ads. But this is subjected to the niche the site features. Your chosen keywords will determine which content network shall feature your ad. The frequency of your ad shall also be determined by your allowed budget.

Laser Targeting your Traffic

To get a good number or estimate of the traffic to buying customer ratio it is good to laser target your traffic. Knowing that your traffic are all potential customers and are interested in your products and company provides you with a more accurate statistics. This will show you how effective your utilizing of Google Adwords is.

Drive laser targeted traffic to your site by using keywords or keyword phrases for your Goggle Adwords that pertains to your company and to your products. There are many online internet tools that can help you in choosing keywords and keyword phrases that are currently in demand that could help drive laser targeted traffic to your site.

With your Google Adwords ad, you are ensured that every click to your ad is a potential customer that is precisely looking pr interested in what you have to offer. Make sure that your Google Adwords ad has the right keywords so that you can drive you’re laser targeted traffic to your site.

Using Google Adwords to help boost the drive to increase laser targeted traffic will prove to be very beneficial as many other companies can attest to. The benefits are high with the cost relatively justifiable.