Posting to discussions is a very fast and powerful way you can start expanding your list of subscribers in as little as 5 minutes.

You can find forums about your niche very easily. Just Google the following:

+”your niche” +forum

or

+”your niche” +discussion board

Just be sure to check the posting guidelines for each forum before you post. The techniques I’m presenting here are generally acceptable on most forums, but you need to know what’s allowed and what’s not, especially when it comes to solicitations.

Here are some quick and easy ways to get pre-qualified traffic flowing your way:

Ask for suggestions or advice. Let’s say you’ve written an article on your site entitled “15 Ways to Put the Romance Back in a Relationship.” You could make a post asking folks to check out the article and see if you missed anything. Or you can ask for additional points to add to your article. Of course you’ll have your opt in box at the end of the article with a compelling offer.

Let’s say you’ve written an article on losing weight quickly. You could post a message like this: “If you had to lose 5 pounds in 2 weeks for a wedding, how would you do it?”

It’s a great way to get both input and exposure for your article. You may also get other publishers who are interesting in your content for their ezines, leveraging that content even more.

Ask for a critique. If you don’t mind getting honest feedback, many people will end up subscribing to your list. It’s a more indirect and acceptable way to ask people to check out your site without blatant advertising. Plus, the feedback they give you may help to make your squeeze page even more compelling. Ask them if it would persuade them to give it a try, assuming they were in your target market (of course you already know they are by the forum you selected). And if they say no, ask them why. You can get valuable information on what they want (and don’t want) this way.

There are two types of forums where you should ask for critiques: the niche forum itself and a marketing forum. You’ll likely get more sign-ups from the niche forum, and good advice to test out from the marketing forum (although you’ll get some opt ins there as well).

Ask your market what they want. It’s one of the best ways to develop products and services they’ll buy and give you ideas for articles, autoresponder content, your blog posts, whatever you need.

The way you would use this technique to get them to subscribe is to post something like, “what’s your biggest question about building a web page?” Or “what’s the single most important thing you’d like to know about brewing your own beer?”

Let them know you’ve already answered 7 questions (your 7 step mini-course loaded in your autoresponder), for example. Then they’ll be more likely to sign-up. Make sure you point out that you’ll add to your mini-course with the answers to the questions they’ve provided, and that they’ll get answers to the existing questions in your mini-course PLUS the new ones when they subscribe. Everybody wins!

Offer a checklist or video tutorial. If someone asks how to research a niche market, give them a checklist of steps they can take. Or make a Camtasia tutorial video showing them how. Now that you’ve got them to your site, you’ll want to “make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

Offer a list of resources. In addition to checklists, resource lists with website URLs make a great site for them to bookmark! Make sure you supply more than just links. Make it a huge info-page of information. A collection of resources, links to everything you have—articles, video, audio, your blog, other useful sites, tools, you name it.

This technique tends to work best when you set up a separate domain for the site. Make it a portal. You want people to come back again and again, so keep it fresh with content and up to date.

Solve a problem or give some help. If someone asks for help or asks a question, offer your experience and try to help them. But to maximize your odds of getting both the asker of the question and everyone else who reads the post to subscribe to your list, try to phrase your answer in one of the following two ways:

1) Give them tips, techniques, shortcuts, secrets, anything that offers both promise of exclusive information and fast results. A shortcut to success.

2) Whenever possible, supply them with specific results. Think about it. When you want to learn how to bowl a perfect game, you go to someone who has bowled a perfect game. When you want to know how to sing with a perfect pitch, you seek out someone who’s already mastered that skill. If you want to lose 10 pounds, it carries more weight (no pun intended) if they person guiding you has actually lost 10 pounds. Do you see where I’m going with this?

And by helping them, maybe—just maybe—they’ll click on he link in your signature to check out your website. If you direct them to a blog post or article you wrote to answer their question, they’ll be even more likely to investigate.

In fact, here’s a sneaky but completely ethical way to virtually guarantee you get an onslaught of new subscribers:

1) Find a hot topic. In most forums you should be able to determine how many times a forum had been read and/or how many posts it contains. You want to find one that’s on fire. If it involves a highly emotional or controversial subject, so much the better, as these tend to grow very quickly and get read often.

2) Write an article about the subject being discussed. You know the topic is of interest to them or it wouldn’t be so hot. In short, you are entering the conversation already in their minds. Your article will be current to the discussion, relevant to what’s being discussed, and highly desired due to the hot nature of the topic. Your article should offer a solution if a problem is being discussed, a tutorial, a case study, a list of tips or shortcuts, whatever this audience is looking for (they’re telling you right there in their posts).

3) If the forum allows it (most do), give it a compelling subject line when you post. What I mean is don’t accept the default original subject already being passed from post to post within that thread. You want your subject to be intriguing and compelling, just like your headlines and article titles, but you may want to hint at being controversial as well. If it’s a hotly discussed topic, people will read your post if they think it’s “gonna be good.” Above all, don’t be boring.

Here are some quick examples on how you could begin your title with a “controversial edge:”

- I don’t think so…

- I think you have it backwards…

- This is the best one I’ve seen…

- Umm…no…

- What I did was…

- That’s good, but this is easier…

- Wait a minute…

- Why do that, when…

- Actually…

- Let me see if I got this straight…

- You can’t go wrong with…

- What about….plus it’s free!

4) Share a part of your article, and direct them back to your article for the rest, where you’ll have an opt in box with a premium if they sign up. I suggest testing a mini-course or archive of articles relating to that topic if they subscribe (but call it something else).

Give them part of your article. Rather than posting your article in its entirety, give them the first part and redirect them to your blog or website to read the rest. Obviously your title and lead must be strong, and you want to stop at a point that leaves them hanging.

Use an 800 Pound Gorilla and Search-Friendly Subjects. Here’s a tip I picked up on Michel Fortin’s forum. By posting your articles or content on “heavyweight” sites like Michel’s, you’ll get higher rankings in organic search engine searches. It’s a no-brainer, but it’s often not understood or used as well as it should.

Give ‘em your best tip and leave them wanting more. Let’s say you’re browsing a blues guitar forum, and you see lot of discussion about learning to play guitar licks like Stevie Ray Vaughn. You put together a tutorial with tablature entitled, “9 Stevie Ray Riffs You Can Learn to Play in an Hour.” In your posted reply, you give them your best riff right there to show you’ve got the goods. Then send them to your tutorial for the other 8 riffs.

Or perhaps you’re looking through a smoking cessation forum. Obviously these folks want to know the best ways to quit smoking. So after you write an article about it, you come back and announce “here are the exact steps I took to quit smoking…and I’ve been smoke-free for a year now.” Remember, people would rather learn from someone who has already done it. If you can be that person, you’ll have a steady stream of prospects following you back to your site wanting more. It just doesn’t get any easier than this.

Include your list offer as a resource. When you find a hot discussion that lends itself well to a list of resources for that topic, by all means supply them with some. Just make sure YOU are included among those resources. For example, if you have a mini-course entitled, “7 Ways to Stop Insomnia,” you could write about “Top 10 Free Insomnia Resources.” And of course you list your mini-course as one of the free resources.

And don’t forget to leverage everything. Use your content for articles, blog posts, forum posts, a free PDF report, wherever you can.

Because your article contains FREE resources, it’s likely that other ezine list owners will publish it. And as an extra incentive to get other list owners to publish it, you can allow them to add one of their own resources into your article. In fact, you can even offer the content with private label rights with the only condition being that your resource stays intact as is. That is, they can change anything else they want and even claim authorship, but your resource stays. And that means even more exposure for you.