Many website owners visit webmaster-related forums such as Digital Point, Site Point, Namepros, and many others on a frequent basis. Every user on these forums gets a signature, a message that is automatically added below each post made by them that can contain texts, links, or even images. These signatures can be very valuable for Internet marketing purposes.

The value of forum signatures is two fold. First, forum signatures can provide high quality exposure and generate targeted leads to the business that utilizes that space. For example, comments posted at an Internet marketing forum will receive targeted exposure from the Internet marketing community and webmasters in related fields, and naturally, signatures plugged into these posts will attract their attentions as well. Whether the signature space contains a link to a web site, corporate brand image, or political slogan of your choice, it sure will catch the eyes of the targeted community behind the forum.

The second benefit of forum signature lies in search engine optimization. Due to the advances of forum scripts as well as search engine spiders’ crawlability, it is pretty common nowadays that website links shown in forum signatures are crawled and indexed by search engines. For example, Digital Point forum, one of the most well-known Internet marketing forums, has more than 140,000 Google-indexed forum pages as of March 2007, and these pages contain individual forum members’ signatures as well as any website links contained therein.

If you place a web site link in your signature and make posts on a heavily crawled search-engine friendly forum, you may be getting as many back links to the web site, that are quickly indexed by search engines. The benefit of such forum back links depends on how popular and how authoritative the forum is in the eyes of search engines. Most forums with more than 100,000 non-spammy human posts usually have very good search engine rankings. You can check the search-engine authority of a given forum by posting a few time and checking how soon your posts are indexed by search engines.

The back links from forum signatures will not count as many different back links coming from different domains, but forum signatures are a great free way to increase Google PageRank and search engine rankings. A recent case study conducted by several webmasters at NamePros.com revealed that with just one link in the signature of a user with 50 posts, they were able to increase the Google PageRank of their new sites from PR0 to PR3.

Although forum signatures bring these marketing benefits, individual signatures are not equally valuable. Naturally, the more active you are as a forum member, the more frequently your signature shows up, and thus, the higher benefit it will bring. Not only the number of posts, but also the quality of your posts determines the value of your forum signature. The signature space of a member who posts five knowledgeable and thoughtful comments a day will exert more power than that of a member who posts dozens of meaningless spams, both in terms of quality exposure and in terms of search engine ranking benefit.

You would like to have the benefits of the signature space, but do not have time to make posts and engage in a forum community? Then you can purchase other members’ signature space. At the Digital Point forum’s Marketplace, signature links are purchased and auctioned off in the “Links” section for a range of monthly prices. A signature from an active and reputable member is being purchased for as much as $40 to $50 per month. Such high price tags allude to their effectiveness.

If you have not tried forum signature marketing yet, maybe you should. You will be surprised at the result!

A few weeks ago, I made a post about PayPerPost type sites such as ReviewMe that were in their “prelaunch phases.” Well, ReviewMe recently launched and after having some time to look through the features, I have to say that I am impressed. The web site is a more “professional version of PayPerPost.com.” Unlike PayPerPost where anyone can submit an entry on their blog (provided that it meets their very low standards) and get paid, ReviewMe allows advertisers to pick and choose what blogs they want to advertise on so that they get the most out of their advertising dollar.

ReviewMe says that prices will vary from $40 to $1000+ per post and prices for a post are set by an algorithm that takes into account various rankings including Alexa ranking and then sets a cost for each blog. Hence, the service does not allow individual bloggers to set their own prices.

From my personal testing, everything appeared good and working well. There were a number of blogs already listed and I completed one opportunity on one of my blogs and made $20. The entire “blogger dashboard” is very nicely organized so it is very easy to keep track of all my information.

The only downside of ReviewMe is that they take 50% so if they set the price of a post on your blog to $40, you only earn $20. But I cannot complain that not all the money comes to my pocket. :)

Overall, if you are looking to create a random blog and be paid $5-$15 for a post, then you are better off using PayPerPost; however, if you have a blog with traffic and a high page rank and think that advertisers would genuinely pay $40+ for a blog post, than ReviewMe is the way to go.

One of the most generally accepted facts in the webmastering community is that forums are very hard to monetize and that there are better online industries to go into. This fact holds some truth, as forums generally do not perform will in terms of AdSense and other PPC click through advertising programs; however, forums are a goldmine for CPM advertising revenue. CPM means cost per thousand page views and with forums, each user who views just three or four threads usually registers 10 or more page views. Hence, if you have a forum with a few members who visit and read through it on a frequent basis, you can easily get 5000 page views or more daily.

The amount you get per 1000 impressions from programs such as AdSense is miniscule; however, if you can attract sponsors by yourself and sell advertising, a forum can easily earn $5-$10 CPM with very little work with just 2 or 3 ads and then as you attract more advertisers, many “big time” forum owners can earn $20+ CPM with 8-10 site wide advertisements in the forum of links and banners of all sizes. With just 5000 page views daily, forum owners with a $20 CPM rater can earn an income of $100 a day and over time as your forum grows, your page views will skyrocket and you can easily earn upwards of $200-$300 a day from advertising.

However, it can be very difficult to find advertisers and there are few web site owners on webmaster forums that will be willing to pay even $2 or $3 CPM for any form of online advertising. That is why you need to network and get advertisers who are willing to pay decent amounts for advertising to visit your web site. The only way to do this is to contact them directly or find a network that will contact them for you. This is not a get rich quick tip, but if you stick with a forum and let it grow, you can earn six figures with a forum, and many forum owners who have realized this do.

The popular virtual reality “game” Second Life, is one of the most unique ways to advertise your web site or make a living online. The web site allows members to create a character and then use real money to buy and sell land and various other supplies. Hence, your net worth in the virtual world has some real value in real money. Entrepreneurs are already starting businesses and with over $400,000 being spent daily in the virtual world, Second Life presents a clear profit opportunity. Currently, the best market to get involved in Second Life is land and real estate because the first thing new characters look to purchase when they enter the virtual world is land to build homes.

This may sound ridiculous, but purchasing land from members now, and then selling in a few months could earn handsome profits depending on how much you invest. Businesses have just started investing in the virtual world so it is an unproven market, but with over a million members and thousands of new members joining daily, it is apparent there will be a market to sell in the near future.

The annual economy of Second Life is estimated at around $65 Million annually and it is reported that there are over 3000 users that are earning over $20,000 annually from the “game.”

Real Life companies are also taking advantage of this opportunity and investing in this online world. Wells Fargo has purchased its own island in the “game” and many other companies are looking to either purchase advertising space or land in the game.

I know many are going to dismiss the opportunity, but now is the time to invest in Second Life. Land is very inexpensive and its retail price is going to continue to rise over the next few years. There is also a growing market of over 1,000,000 users and many people are already earning five figure incomes from the game.

Recently there has been a lot of discussion regarding paying for blog posts as a means of advertising. In the summer of this year, PayPerPost, a new web startup that allows bloggers to earn by making posts about company’s products or services, was launched. Since its launch over 4 months ago, the site has created a rift in the online blogging community between those who think paying for blog posts is ethical, and those who think not.

Many argue that their service is not ethical since bloggers do not disclose that they were paid for the post. Others argue that it is the blogger’s individual right to choose whether or not they want to display advertisements in the method of a post and whether or not they want to disclose that they were paid for the post. We will stay out of the politics of the issue and instead focus on how this service has sparked interest in “Paying for Blog Posts” as a primary way of monetizing weblogs.

Over the past few months, many new web startups such as ReviewMe have followed the PayPerPost model, but created their own variations. ReviewMe allows advertisers to choose certain blogs to advertise on, while PayPerPost allows bloggers to choose which “opportunities” they want to blog about.

PayPerPost recently reported that they have earned over $100,000 since their launch and that tens of thousands of posts have been made using their network. This and the fact that they recently received $3 Million in VC Funding should lead to a great increase in the “paying for blog post” market of web advertising over the next few years. The industry is definitely one to keep a close eye on.

YouTube made major headlines earlier this month when Google bought the video giant for $1.65 billion. A web site worth that much money must be something. Here we are going to talk about how you can use YouTube, and other popular video sharing web sites, to promote your web site and increase traffic. Videos on the Internet are becoming very popular these days, and the success of YouTube and other video web sites illustrates that people are indeed looking for web sites that have some video content. This in turn presents an inexpensive yet effective advertising opportunity to help you increase traffic to your web site.

The concept is quite simple. Create a video that is interesting and something that people would find entertaining enough to leave YouTube and visit your web site. This can be done by having some sort of cliffhanger at the end of the video, or cutting the video in the middle and displaying a message that reads: “For the rest of this video, visit MySite.com.” - Make sure that you remember to include a quick blurb about your web site in the video itself. Then upload the video to video sharing web sites. There are over 1 million videos uploaded to YouTube daily and only the select few that happen to get the most views, move up to the home page of the “Most Popular” list. You can get people to view your video by visiting popular forums where users are looking for videos, like the eBaum’s World forums, and post a link to your YouTube video. You can also submit your video to web sites such as Fark and Digg and hope for the best. If you get enough views, you will have millions of people watching your video, and with that many people viewing your video, you are bound to get at least a few thousand unique visitors.

There are many webmasters who are spending countless hours trying to manually trade and buy legitimate links to help improve their web site’s search engine rankings and page rank. However, there is a much easier way for webmasters to get many more back links for less work in a shorter amount of time. A Press Release is a great way to reach editors and web site owners and will help you get your message out to the general public, both online and offline. If you write an effective press release about something new and interesting about your web site, it will get picked up very quickly by a number of blogs and other online news sources, who in turn will provide your web site with many backlinks. Getting a post about your web site or new company on sites such as Tech Crunch and others could drive thousands of unique visitors to your site and have a significant impact on your ranking in the search engines.

Not only is a press releases great in terms of SEO, it helps spread the word about your company and often times, it is picked up by a number of magazines and newspapers who may print a related article to help get more coverage and generate buzz.

If you are unsure of how a press release works, there are a number of experts who will help you at rates varying from $10 to $500 and often times, and cost does not always determine quality. You just want to get someone who has gotten results in the past and has the experience necessary to launch a successful public relations campaign.