I've a niche website and I'm quite new to design and SEO. I read somewhere (reputable) that a way of increasing traffic is to join forums and without going overboard add something of relevance to a topic discussed and mention your URL too. I had a feeling it was a little dicey and wished I'd asked on here before going ahead. Is it spam? I did a post on one forum and got a sweet email telling me not to spam the site. I apologised sweetly too and said I wouldn't do it again. Then today I received an email at a private email address from a member there which was vey rude and quite threatening. There's no way I gave them this address. How did they get my email address? Could they do anything else? If you were stupid enough to get yourself into the same situation, what would you do?
every forum has it's rules, if you break them, then it is not good. in this forum, you can have affiliate links in your signature, you can sell signature and avatar etc, you can ask a review for your site etc, but then other forums may say this stuffs are not allowed. so, just follow the rules of every forum, and then it is ok!! if you write a one page post, and include a url in it, most sites won't say anything. still it is suggested, just read there rules, before posting. try article submission, submit article and include 2-3 urls in it, that will give you some targeted and quality traffic. try directory submission, that will help you. try reading seo blogs, it really helps!
If you ever had a forum, you would know that its quite a work to keep it spamfree. On the other hand I think many of us has started in the SEO business by trying to post our links in some forums along with a more or less irrelevant topic Don't be that scared - just read the rules of the forum before entering a URL and a comment and try to make both relevant Good luck
Just find forums that talk about things you like to talk about, become a good community member, then abide by their signature policy. Lots of forums allow signatures to contributing members.