Forum Addiction: Are You An Addict?

Dale King

Definition of addiction: The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.

Forums are a great way to market your business, and interact with like-minded individuals. On average, I spend about 20 minutes per day on forums. I zip in, make my post(s) and zip right out again. Why so fast? Because I've got a business to run, and I've got plenty of work to keep me busy all day and half the night. However, I know of several individuals who spend 8 hours per day or more on forums. Their explanation is they enjoy the community of forums, meeting new people and basically just hanging out.

I'm not a pyschiatrist, but in my opinion, if you're spending 8 hours per day on forums, unless you're the forum owner or a moderator, you're addicted. Not only that, if you're spending that many hours per day on forums, how are you getting any work done? How are you running your business?

So here's my question: How much time do you spend on forums each day?

As always, I welcome your comments and/or feedback.

Dale King

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Mike Whitty

Hi Dale,

I subscribe to several forums, and own one for vehicle sales. So I spend over a period of a day approximately 1 hour in total. I may spend more when I'm submitting articles to mine, but on this one I'm probably here about 15 minutes per day.

I use Google reader to find out what new posts have been submitted and just read them. So by doing it this way, I don't have to spend as much time searching each forum.

Mike

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Dale King

Hello Mike:

Only an hour a day? You're definitely not an addict.

Dale King

MitchM

I'm addicted to everything in my life I give untold hours of time to including forums I don't give untold hours to - BUT I spend too much time online reading, etc. and it's an addiction.

Amount of time on forums varies. Eight hours a day - four hours a day - sounds like a serious addiction or habit, hobby, to me.

I'm not convinced forums are great ways for people to market their businesses. I've studied that from different perspectives and what I've found is no evidence that many people few people successfully market their businesses online. Can you point to any evindence contrary to mine, Dale?

When I've asked direct questions of people promoting themselves as people who have successfully marketed their businesses online over the years only one I can remember ever replied with anything other than vague generalities.

BUT Dale, the people I've met who have successfully sold this or that online - or used the Internet as part of their marketing and contact activity - WERE ADDICTED TO IT. They spend untold hours setting up things and hanging out online.

The exceptions I've met have been those who put up web sites and using lots of Internet marketing skills and advertising sell things in the "click and buy" way - a transaction basically.

MitchM

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Dale King

Mitch, studying something from afar and actually participating are two entirely different things. Since you haven't actually tried forum marketing, you aren't qualified to say that it doesn't work. And if you have tried it and failed, then obviously you didn't do it correctly. Approximately 50% of my business is a direct result of my forum participation - 20-30 minutes a day. The other 50% comes from my articles and referrals.

Forum marketing works for me. That's the only evidence I need.

Dale King

MitchM

Not that argument again that one must have tried or done something to know what it's all about - I won't even attempt to debate that false argument, Dale.

Then you're one of the few people who are successful as I spoke of in my post. Why you're defensive about that I don't know.

Let's be honest, someone who has never tried to do what I do - network marketing - who studies the industry, interviews lots of people and looks at the stats and says: "MitchM, very few people are successful in network marketing to the point of earning even five figure incomes let along six or seven." and I'd be the first to say, "You are right my friend."

It would be ingenuous of me to deny that truth and even more ingenuous to say that person had no right to make such an assertion having never tried it.

Rewread my post Dale, - it says a lot more than you give it credit for saying and choose to ignore or missed.

Dale King

Mitch, let's just agree to disagree. Besides, this isn't really a marketing topic. It's a topic about forum addiction. That's why I posted it in the off-topic forum. So let's stay on-topic, shall we?

Dale King