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Recently, forum marketing has been touted as a kind of free, organic, viral marketing. But because so many marketers go into forums purely with the intention of marketing products or services, their actions and attitude unwittingly causes the exact opposite of the desired effect.

Forums aren’t marketplaces but when used as such, the marketers’ actions become offensive and will only inspire the wrath of fellow members and marketers, not to mention moderators who can ban them from the site with the click of their mouse.

In order to be effective, this kind of marketing carries a certain degree of commitment, responsibility and respect. The first requirement is to take a personal interest in the main topic of the forum. Not only does that mean visiting it regularly, but it also means developing a good relationship with both other members and the moderators, as well as taking an active interest in helping others. Of course, it also means abiding by and all rules that exist. By doing this, one can develop a reputation and, since it is human nature to work with a trusted colleague, business will naturally develop from this.

This type of marketing has already suffered some abuse and because of this, many forums have recently developed stringent rules designed to protect their members from abusive or overly-aggressive marketing tactics. One forum grants .sig files only after a member has created one hundred valid posts and another has disallowed ads in sig files altogether.

Marketers must respect that the purpose of a forum is to be a platform to exchange ideas on a given topic. It is not there to advertise products and services. By focusing on the topic and posting questions and answers, a marketer’s reputation will grow and this creates the potential for sales naturally.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

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I announced earlier that Identity Theft Radio will be returning coming in January, so in celebration of it’s return, I am offering a brand new eBook, hot off the presses, at a discounted price to all of my loyal listeners and readers.

Here is an excerpt from the book, Credit Repair Strategies Revealed:
Credit Repair is defined as a method of disputing or rectifying discrepancies presented on credit bureau reports in order to obtain the highest and most exact ratings for consumers.

Among the most crucial matters to think back is regarding credit problems and this also means you’re not the only one who is suffering from bad credit. On the other side, there are millions of honorable, hard-working people from all around the country who are presently experiencing or have suffered troubles with their credit too. However, your awareness of the importance of having good credit has put you one step closer to actually achieving a good credit rating and improving your quality of living.

Even though your credit rating may seem like an intangible asset, it is one of the most valuable and important assets that you have. Without a good credit rating your financial, occupational, and personal goals are at risk of being severely limited. In order to obtain the privilege of using a credit card, your credit rating is checked.

If a company determines your credit to be unsatisfactory, you will be denied. From the moment you are denied, your quality of living is impeded. If you can’t get a credit card, you can’t rent a car, order tickets, or even rent a video. Because your credit rating was determined to be unsatisfactory, most companies will not let you use their money.

Today more than ever, many businesses perform routine background checks during the hiring process. Once again, if your credit rating reveals something of concern to them, you can be turned away for employment. Since maintaining a good credit rating is important in today’s society, a poor credit rating can have a negative snowball effect toward your personal goals.

Good, string credit allows you to live with financial security and enables you to purchase items without depleting your life savings.
Repairing your credit can seem like a monumental task; however, it can also be as easy as wiring a letter or making a phone call. Your decision to repair your credit rating will benefit you for the rest of your life.

The more time you invest now toward strengthening your credit rating, the better your quality of life will be. This guide is intended to support and help individuals and families find the answers to the most commonly asked questions of credit repair, as well as informing them of the dangers that lurk the marketplace.

After reading our guide, you will have the basic knowledge to getting out of debt, as well as information that will guide you to resources that will help you repairing your credit, get loans, and so forth.

This is a must read guide for anyone that has bad credit, no credit, or trying to establish a good credit.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Wow, haven’t done one of these posts in awhile. Posts about icon packs continue to be the best performing search engine traffic generator. Without further adieu, ThinkDesign has created what I believe to be a very nice looking icon set featuring social web services such as Reddit, Digg, Technorati, Facebook, etc. The icon pack is 0.5mb in size, is in EPS format and is filed under the CC Attribution-Share Alike license.

The nice thing about this icon pack is that you can very easily create on-hover effects as their are two of each icon.

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In order to be successful using forums to do viral marketing there are some things that are required.

Do Your Homework: Prior to joining any forum, you must do some research.

1. Join relevant forums that are in some way related to the promotion’s primary sales market. For example, someone involved with a health related product, many types of forums could apply….everything from holistic medicine to stay-at-home moms.

2. Choose popular forums. There is no point in wasting your time and energy on forums that few members and few posts. Page raking and the amount of active members are two good ways to check for this.

3. Choose forums that allow sig tags. If it’s possible read the rules before joining and pay attention to them. Your time is important, too. It is better to find out that a forum doesn’t allow posts with sig tags before you go to the time and trouble of joining.

After You Have Joined: OK…you have chosen two or three forums that meet your requirements…now what?

1. Keep your sig tag short and update it regularly. The ideal thing is to limit yourself to one link, preferably to your main website.

2. Never create posts that are nothing more than an advertisement. This all but a universal rule and only displays the marketers lack of experience if he does so. At best this kind of post will be deleted by the monitors….at worst, it is grounds for being banned.

3. Work the room. Be an active member on the forum. Plan to spend at least an hour each day there and take the time to get to know the users. Take the time to introduce yourself with intelligent questions depending upon the forum’s topic.

As a marketer becomes a regular member, they will hopefully develop a good reputation and without saying a word about their promotion, those who are interested in their product will approach them.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

Hey, I can’t seem to leave this topic alone! I’ve been thinking about the subject nonstop not to mention, Alister Cameron’s article which I linked to the other day sure did provide some food for thought, especially when it comes to child themes.

Based on everything I’ve read throughout the comments and what have you, there are two things that have become clear. The first is, it is perfectly acceptable under the GPL to charge for a WordPress theme, or WordPress itself if you really wanted to. The second, placing any sort of restrictions on a WordPress theme automatically makes the theme violate the GPL. While I’m no GPL expert, those two facts have been made clear to me.

With that in mind, that makes me wonder how the hell premium theme authors have been doing business selling themes with single use or multi-use licenses all this time. Considering that under the GPL, nothing stops someone from redistributing the php files for free. This puzzles me because I would have thought by now, the premium theme market would have been killed off thanks in part to people redistributing these themes for free.

So, the next stick in the spokes is themes that were removed because the link within them pointed back to a site that either sold premium themes that were not GPL or contained advertising for sites that participated in releasing GPL violated material. For those of you who maintain a WordPress related website, will you be making the move to remove advertising for companies that do not adhere to the GPL? If you don’t, by the looks of things, you won’t be getting any support from Matt or anyone involved with the WordPress project. But then, those who sell premium themes and operate their business are the ones who spend money on advertising. I can’t think of a theme author who releases fully compliant GPL themes who would spend money on advertising for their theme or business of releasing free themes. Why bother when they could just upload it to the theme repository. Ok, so lets connect the circle in that, if the major WordPress community websites decide to align themselves with Matt’s thoughts and GPL compliance guidelines and then they drop the advertising for businesses that sell themes which violate the GPL, could this mean that all premium theme businesses throw out the single license/multi-license business model and go the Brian Gardner route or some other route just as long as they are fully GPL compliant?

Based on previous run ins with Matt and his answers to specific questions at various WordCamps, it’s pretty obvious that he would like to see premium theme authors do business in the way WordPress.com does. That is, embrace the spirit of GPL by releasing your work under the license and build a business around the value of that work. It is also obvious that Matt and Toni fully support the way Brian Gardner and Jason Schuller are running their business. So if you’re a business that has been built on the model of selling the entire theme (php files, css and images) for single-use or multi site licenses and then stating that the theme can not be redistributed, now might be a good time to either think of a new way of doing business that is completely in line with GPL and Matt’s way of thinking or, do things your own way while not counting on support from the WordPress project.

What could this all mean for the average Joe? For starters, if those who make a living selling an entire theme switch over to releasing their work for free, the WordPress community as a whole will benefit by having access to some kick ass themes. It’s been proven before that not everyone who uses WordPress knows what they are doing and so, if you need support for a particular theme, be prepared to pony up some cash.  Premium theme authors will compete amongst each other by way of design, ease of use, customizations, various style sheets, image sets, theme clubs, support, consultation services, etc. Alister makes a great point in that, perhaps

The issue is that most of us have not thought creatively enough about how to both honour the GPL and make money.

I’ve already listed a couple of elements that theme authors could charge for but how about another. I can easily see a creative premium theme author starting their own theme marketplace. The premium theme author creates a base package and then, that theme author can use their marketplace for their specific themes as an affiliate type of marketplace. Basically, if I really enjoy your theme but I have edited the CSS to change the look or feel of the theme and visitors to my site are asking me what I did to achieve that look because they want it to, I could sign up for your marketplace, upload my customized CSS file for that specific theme, give it a price of my choosing and realize that a portion of money I make from anyone who purchases that customization will go back to the marketplace owner. I realize that a customized CSS file might be a bad example considering how easy it is to copy someones CSS file but I think I got the idea across. That’s funny, that idea sounds a little bit like the Theme Marketplace idea that Automattic was thinking of doing.

I don’t speak for Matt or anyone involved with the project. These are all my thoughts and opinions on the matter.