Forum Signatures

I suppose most of you have tried internet marketing by utilizing email signatures when emailing friends or relatives. Have you done the same in forums?

It seems to only work well when you're posting at a forum that's relevant to your product/service/website - and then you risk angering the webmaster by trying to drive traffic away from their own site.

That said, I've had the odd click or two to my own website through places that are very far removed from the topic of my site (reality TV). But I don't think it's a solid or dependable method of marketing - at least it hasn't been for me personally.

I see, thanks for the input, Carrie. Maybe if one frequents forums, then it should work. I think some companies are actually ulitizing this form of publicity and I see some signatures here that link to some other site. But I think you are right, it may be a violation of the forum's TOS.

I rarely look at the forum signatures because I only focus on the message typed for the forum. However, I think that using forum signature to drive away the traffic from the forum may not be a good idea also.

I use a signature in posts I make on forums, but only if the forum allows it -- make sure to read the forum's TOS before creating a signature.

As far as the signature's successs... my Web site's stats reports shows click throughs from the forums, but usually I don't get a whole lot. I say if the forum owner allows it why not -- you never know.

I rarely if ever click on a forum signature link.

Forum signature is not that effective way of advertising. You may have some hits coming from that forum but there is only a limited number of people who can see your signature and that is if you are very active in that forum.

I think like most things it depends. I do quite well from forum sigs in one or two forums that are relevant. It's certainly a less obnoxious approach than spam posting and I have tracked clicks coming in form it especailly if my posts give some reasonably useful advice.

I have had success with this form of advertising, but it can also be difficult because usually what I find happens is that you are not the only person advertising this business or product. So, there is definitely competition out there.

A lot of people rarely clicks forum signature links. I'm not sure why they don't but they just don't. I have tried it a few times and found that a few links can be successful while others aren't. Be careful not to spam the forums with nonsense posts or the admin of the forum will boot you out as fast as you came in.