If you happened to stumble onto my blog last evening and early this morning, you probably noticed that it looked very weird. No, it wasn’t your computer or browser. The design was messed up.

What happened was I trying to fix a simple write error by changing the permission settings for a particular directory. Instead of fixing the simple problem, I inadvertently created a much bigger problem. The main functions of the blog still worked and navigation shouldn’t have been a problem, though.

Without trying to sound too “techie,” the read/write permissions that I screwed up caused my WordPress theme to not show up. So, you saw my blog, but without the header and other graphics. The layout was also messed up as a result.

I’m just happy everything is working properly again. I have folks from the Warrior Forum and my web tech guru from Niche Power Group to thank for helping me resolve this issue.

This is a good lesson to remember that if you plan on making changes to your blog, no matter how small, to first make a backup of your blog in case something terrible goes wrong. All I can say is… lesson learned!

Participating in forums has many benefits which I’ve covered here in the past. There’s the knowledge, recognition, and backlinks that you can gain, as well as the satisfaction of helping others.

With all that said, there may be some other reasons why you choose a particular forum over others as your first choice. I think it’s safe to say that each forum has its own benefits, but what makes the forum you spend the most time in so great?

This topic came up just recently in the Evan Carmichael Entrepreneur Forums, and I thought it would be nice to get some of my readers’ feedback on the issue.

Most agreed, including myself, that our number one reason for spending the most time in a particular forum is due to the friendly atmosphere. Everyone is willing to help another out, including newbies. I was a newbie once, and still am in many areas. It feels nice to be treated like an equal and given help without facing ridicule and harassment from those more experienced.

The Bible verse that says “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” quickly comes to my mind here. I’ve been disrespected and spat upon in the past from forum members who thought they were the bigshot. It’ doesn’t feel good at all and makes me leave and go somewhere else for answers.

I would say that most people have been treated like this at some point in their lives, whether in real life or online. It’s no wonder why this subject comes up often when this same attitude is portrayed in various forums. People like myself usually avoid them at all cost, never to return.

However, those same forums are usually full of valuable information. Because of this, I will usually lurk around and gobble up as much of it as possible, but if I have a question about something I read, I’ll ask elsewhere.

You want to know what my favorite forum is? I have two favorites for two different reasons. One is of course the Evan Carmichael Entrepreneur Forums because of the very friendly and helpful atmosphere. The other is the PIPS Support Forum which is part of the Warrior Forum because I’m always on the lookout for new marketing strategies to build my online business. If you’re wondering what PIPS is, you can learn more about that here.

So, the question for you is, what makes the forum you spend the most time in so great? It can be for any reason at all. Feel free to also list the forums you participate in.

One of my readers prompted me to write about the use of forums in marketing your work from home web site or products/services that you offer. Believe it or not, forums can provide terrific targeted traffic as well as long-term natural search engine traffic.

I’ve always been a fan of forums. They provide an enormous wealth of information that is completely free. You can get any question answered by those more experienced. These two benefits alone are well worth the time of getting involved in forums.

An even bigger benefit that some overlook is the marketing aspect that forum participation can bring. The marketing doesn’t come from your posts, but instead from your forum signature. This aspect, that is built into most if not all forums, is not used to its full potential.

Forum signatures should be designed to grab the attention of other forum members who read your posts. This can be tricky as you usually have limited space to create a signature, but it can be done.

A forum signature usually consists of your favorite links to websites that you want to share with others. These can also be your own websites, and that’s what this post is going to focus on.

Here’s an example of one of my signatures… http://www.warriorforum.com/members/alan-mater.html. Click on the About Me tab and scroll down till you see the Signature section.

Notice how every website or web page contains a phrase that is hyperlinked to go to the corresponding URL. For instance, I have Professional Proofreading Services linked to go to http://www.replaceyoursalary.com/proofreading.html.

The mistake I see many make is that they ignore the keyword aspect of forum signatures and just enter the URL for their website, and sometimes they don’t even have it hyperlinked! That’s fine if you’re focusing on direct traffic from the forum, but you’re missing out on the larger aspect of natural search engine traffic.

Note: Most forums have different signature rules and require specific code in order to create hyperlinked text. Be sure you know what is required when setting up your signature, otherwise it won’t turn out right.

You see, using keywords in your signature links will create backlinks to the web pages those links link to for your given keyword phrase and also boost those pages rankings in the search engines. This will create long-term search traffic, which should be your ultimate goal.

Forum participation is a great way to get your name and business or work from home web site noticed by others. But, you want to get noticed by the right kind of people. What I mean is that you want to pick forums that are related to what your business or web site offers. You want your direct traffic to be as targeted as possible.

The last MUST is providing value when posting in forums. This will ensure you get noticed and bring more clickthroughs of your signature links. Below I’ll provide a list of forums I actively post in that are related to the Internet Marketing and Work From Home niche and get a great deal of traffic from…

Warrior Forum

Conquer Your Niche

Entrepreneur Forums

Work At Home Forum

Alright, now get to work and start getting involved in forums!

A while ago I had posted a question on the Warrior Forum about how to find a profitable niche. That question received some great responses, and I thought I’d share with you some ways you can find a profitable niche, even during the recession.

One thing I would just like to add is that it’s important to get into something that you have a personal interest in. There’s no point in creating a website in hopes of selling something if you have absolutely no interest in the products or idea.

For instance, I have an interest in video games. I have quite a few different gaming consoles, and I’ll every now and then take some time to play. Because of that, I decided to start a website related to the Nintendo video games niche.

I used some of the responses to my question to gauge exactly what niche I should go into. Here is some feedback (in my own words) of how to go about finding a profitable niche. And keep in mind… you want to make a profit here, otherwise it’s not worth it.

First, you want to find a “hungry” market. In other words, you want to find buyers for whatever it is you’re thinking of selling.

Once you find a hungry market, or niche, you need to gauge how much competition there is for that market. High competition isn’t always bad. That means there is money to be made. Too low of competition could mean there’s not a hungry market. But, that could also mean you have the chance to make some serious money due to the low competition and the need within that market. It requires some research, but more often than not, go after niches WITH competition.

So this brings the question… how do you go about finding a niche and also determining the amount of competition?

Here’s some strategies to find a hungry niche:

1. Search the term in Google, if there are a lot of advertisers at the right column of the results page, it’s likely a good one. These are ads that people are paying for.
2. Search on CBEngine.com. See what products are hot right now and what niche they’re in.
3. Search on Amazon.com. Check if there are books, CDs, etc. that sells to that niche.
4. If you’re looking to sell software, check Download.com, etc.
5. See if there are at least 3 forums in the niche you’re looking to get into.
6. Use Google Trends, eBay Pulse and Yahoo’s Top Searched to find out what people want.

Here’s some advice that would be very relevant to today’s economy. Find a lower priced niche that targets towards people’s needs more directly rather than expensive isolated niches.

How to determine the amount of competition…

I recommend reading How To: Evaluating Competition For New Site Niches as Dennis Edell posted an article by Donna Fontenot that provides some great insight on this very topic.

Also, use tools such as Google Keyword Tool and SpyFu to find out how many competitors you could be dealing with. If you’re focusing on specific keywords, do a simple search in Google and see how many websites show up for that keyword phrase.

Another tool I highly recommend is Detecting Online Commercial Intention: Audience Intelligence: adCenter Labs. This is to see if your particular keywords are profitability-oriented (example: people searching for “acne” want info. People searching for “acne cure” want a solution/product).

There’s a lot more I could share with you, but that should give you a pretty good start in finding a profitable niche you can use to make money on the internet.

If you want to fast-track your learning curve in finding a profitable niche and have all the hard work done for you, I recommend you check out the Niche Power Group.

Did you learn anything from this article? Is there anything you would like to add? I’d love to hear your feedback.