So I'm trying to really ramp up my marketing for my DUI site. I feel bad that I haven't been very motivated lately. So i decide to go look for forumns and make sigs and contribute to the conversation, per instructions I've received here and elsewhere. I find a merry little forum talking about the woes of DUI from various real life citizens, i.e. not lawyers, and I pipe in. I created my sig immediately with two links to my site, if you blink you'd miss them. After the 3rd quick post, of me agreeing with people and talking about 4th amendment rights: YOU HAVE BEEN BANNED NO REASON GIVEN I'm like wtf? Now there is no way anyone actually reading my posts in any shape form or fashion would say they were controversial, trolling, nor even disagreeable. Are there just shady forum webmasters out there? I man I wasn't saying "oh woah is me I got a dui from da police". Honestly I don't know what to think at his point. All in 30 minutes I was banned. i've never been banned before. Not even warned for anything. Since you all are seemingly for more experienced, can yall give me pointers? advice? There was nothing black hat [whatever that means] going on, on my part.
Was there possibly a required number of posts for new members before they can add links in their sigs? Other than that, I'm scratching my head too! Sorry for your luck on that!
as a previous forum owner, i can positively say that spam is a pain in the fucking ass. i'm sure they saw you, a new member, posting with links in your sig to your page, and just cut you without giving it a second thought. sucks, but that's the way it goes. i wouldn't call them shady. there's much shadier **cough cough** cookie stuffing **cough cough** forum owners
Before I even joined, YOU CAN BET, I checked out at least 20 posts, looked at everyone's sig, got a jist of what was going on. Now I will say in one post another member complained that 5 people's posts were missing, no one knew about it though. No there was no requirement about sigs, the rules were stay on topic. I own a DUI website, so you know for the past 6 months, all the research, all the laws, i got some on topic crap to talk about. Hell my yahoo answers are copied and pasted to Insurance websites LOL.
perhaps you stood in direct competition with his projects. either way, no one said any forum operator had to let you post on their forums. it sucks, but like i said, there's way shadier shit than that going down on forums. look at forums like gfy, where even the shadiest scamming advertisers are given top placement and congratulations for paying off the owners, hell even dp's owners got nailed for cookie stuffing. you don't get much more fraudulent than that...
I suspected I was probably naive about this side of things. And, you're probably right, he probably made the forum so he could get clients, anyone else is ousted. Which he's dumb if he's kicking 6 registered users who are posting to his forum out. More traffic raises his stance in Google.
With something like the DUI niche, I'd suggest going to your local bars and leave cards in the bathrooms with something catchy on them that will make people visit your site. Also you could print out fliers of some type and leave a stack in the area people enter the bars.
I wouldn't say shady, just heavy handed in the way they moderate their forums. It could very well be that they are now poorer for having stopped your involvement because of your experience and expertise. Next time don't include sigs so quickly. In fact, join up and don't post for a few weeks unless you're just joining in on meaningless conversation. Allow the community to warm up to you before you break out the big guns.
I agree. If I find a forum that I think would be good to join for the long haul, I don't put in a sig at first. Let them see that you are real. The same goes for comments on any blog where you see long term value. Let the blog owner know you are commenting for the sake of commenting, not to get a backlink.
Some forum owners are asses but it's their site. I was an active member on a forum and had about 70 quality posts, then the owner decided to replace my signature with some crap quote. Needless to say, I'm not an active participant on that forum any longer
This is also what I really HATE on a lot of forums. We are making good post and we are not paid, right? So the best incentive for us is to give us space in the signature. It is like Ezinearticles.com -- we could publish good articles for free but have the source box as our incentive. It is a give and take process. Forum owners should never expect that we will devote our time and effort and then get nothing at the end...well, some forum members will do that but not me...my time is valuable.
It's his forum, he can ban you for any reason he wants. This doesn't make him shady or immoral or anything like that.
I give every word i put down on paper or on my keyboard carefully and reserved thought. Half the time I will look up some obscure point I want to make and quote a citation. On that particular forumn I think I even quoted a supreme court case. Of course with effort like that, a signature is the least they could do. I'm involved with an anime forum, and because of how involved i am on the net so far, my sig brought their forumn to the law google groups LOL, 2nd rank even. ROFL. I realize the forum owner, is the head cheese, but that doesn't mean they aren't shady, lazy, sneezy, jerky, turdy and just plane Dick. I like to know the rules. [go figure] I read his rules and it said nothing about signatures or no non-client posters [which obviously I am] Oh well. What's was weird was I wasn't the only one thinking something was wrong on there.
Boo Hoo You got banned from a forum trying to advertise your site. That happens to everyone. Stop whining and just move on.