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I hope by now; you already know the importance of building your own e-mail list, and forming a good business relationship with the people on it.

For many people, the big obstacle comes when they have to come up with content to send out in their newsletters. I want to share what I think is a very easy, but highly underused method of getting hot, fresh, up-to-the-minute newsletter content for just about any niche market.

The best part is you don’t have to write any of the content yourself!

Now, before I reveal the exact technique, one method you are probably thinking of now is using articles from article directories, and article announcement lists.

That is also a good technique, and the obvious option most people would consider.  What I want to give you is an alternative to using the same old articles that everyone else is using.

Here’s the key part to all of this:

Virtually every niche market has one or more public message boards/forums, where people interested in that subject gather to discuss various topics related to it.  You CAN’T use the actually content on the forums, because that will almost certainly be protected by copyright, and belong to the site owner.

HOWEVER, there is still a very simple way to capitalize on the constant flood of fresh content, being added to the forums each day.

What I’m talking about is publishing a list of ‘top forum posts’ for any niche market you choose to target. Before I get into the nitty gritty of the quickest and easiest ways to do this, lets look at why this would make good newsletter content.

1. The content is fresh, up to date and unique.
2. Forum posts get added every day, so your source of content just keeps on getting bigger and bigger.
3. You will be building your reputation and credibility, without having to actually write anything yourself.  By choosing and highlighting what you consider to be interesting and informative forum posts, this will help to raise the perception that you are an authority and have a good knowledge of the niche you are publishing about. (Assuming that you link to good posts, and not bad ones, which I will cover in a moment)
4. You will be saving people time and effort, that they would normally have to spend if they were to track all the information down themselves.
5. With each newsletter you send out, you have the opportunity of placing ads above, below or in the middle of the top posts you have listed, either for your own products, or affiliate programs. Thus providing you with a way of making a profit.

Obviously, the quality of the information in the forum posts you link to, will have a strong bearing on your perceived credibility, and how useful your newsletter will be viewed.

To help you get to grips with this tactic lets pick ‘gardening’ as an example topic, which you may want to produce a newsletter on.

Gardening is obviously a very popular niche with many different forums discussing every aspect of it.  For some much smaller niche markets there are going to be less forums on the subject.  If that turns out to be the case, it may be that you have to go looking for information on forums that cover a wider variety of topics.

1. Lets say you want to product a newsletter for people interested in ‘rose gardening’.  In this case, you may not be able to find many, or even any forums just for people interested in rose gardening.  In this particular case, you would go to the bigger gardening forums and seek out posts specifically about rose gardening amongst the many other topics.
2. Ideally, you should try and find at least 2 or more forums to create a top forum posts list from.  What you are doing is providing your subscribers with a quick reference list of the best forum posts across a number of forums.  The more forums you cover, the higher the perceived value of your list becomes, because it would take people longer to find the same good information themselves.  Even if you can only find one good forum in your niche to link to, your newsletter will still be useful to people who don’t have the time to go through all the posts, to find the one’s worth reading.
3. Using the ‘gardening example, just go to Google and type in any of these keyword combinations:

   ‘gardening forum’
   ‘gardening forums’
   ‘gardening message board’
   ‘gardening message boards’

   Or check out the groups listed here:
   
   http://www.google.com/grphp

4. Once you have compiled a list of good popular forums in your niche, add them to your favorites folder so that you can access them quickly.
5. If your chosen niche forums don’t get a great deal of activity, you may decide that you can only find enough good posts to publish a monthly newsletter.  Alternatively, you may be able to publish something every week, or even twice a week.  This will depend on what you want to do, and the quantity/quality of the information you have at your disposal.

Here’s How To Find And Choose The Best Forum Posts To Link To In Your Newsletter…

Having already found and bookmarked your list of popular forums for your niche, it shouldn’t take you much more than about 10 to 15 minutes to create your top posts list, maybe more when you are still getting used to things.

If you are personally interested and active in the forums yourself, all you have to do is make a note of the good posts as you see them throughout the week.  If like myself, you are not really into gardening, but you want to publish a top forum posts list…here’s what I would do:

1. When you visit the majority of forums, most of the hard work is done for you, because you can usually see at a glance, which posts have been viewed the most times, and how many replies to the original post there has been.
2. Each forum will be different.  On one forum a 100 views of a post might mean that it is very popular, where on another you might expect popular posts to be viewed 500 or 1000+ times.  You will need to get a feel for what looks like a popular post, by comparing the view numbers across a number of different posts on each forum.
3. Now, just because a post has seen a lot of activity with lots of replies and views, doesn’t mean it’s a good one to link to.  I’m sure you already know that sometimes posts ignite with traffic, as two or more people exchange words in a heated debate or abusive argument.  This is not the sort of thing you are looking to link to.
4. Scan down the list of posts in the forum, and jump in to check out the popular ones. You don’t have to read everything.  Just scroll down quickly looking at the first line or two in the replies to the original poster.

   If you see people saying things like: ‘great post’, ‘good info’, ‘good idea’, ‘that’s useful’ etc., that is usually a good indication that the other forum members found the posts worth reading.

   Sometimes it may not be that obvious what people think, just by doing a quick scan. So I’ll look out for positive follow up comments from the more experienced forum members.  These members are usually quite easy to spot, by looking out for things like: ‘advanced member’, ‘senior member’ or ‘moderator’ listed under their forum name.

5. When you come across a good post, copy and paste the link to your list, together with a headline that tells people what the post is going to be about. You should be able to come up with something very quickly, by just adapting or adding to the subject line of the forum post.
6. There’s no particular perfect number, for the amount of posts you should link to in each newsletter.  If you only link to two posts, then your list won’t have a high perceived value. On the flip side, if you link to 30 posts every newsletter issue, a lot of people will find that too much to go through.  I would probably have around 8 to 10 to begin with.  Once your list starts to grow, you can ask your subscribers for feedback on whether they would prefer more or less links than you currently provide for them.
7. If you use an autoresponder service like Aweber, they have a feature where you can track the number of clicks for each link.  Tracking your clickthroughs will help you to identify which headlines your subscribers clicked on the most, which will in turn help you to know what type of information they want more of.

If you spend more time to carefully select only the really good forum posts, this will obviously increase the value your subscribers will place on newsletter.  If you consistently list posts that aren’t that useful or interesting, then people aren’t going to read it.

You have to strike a balance between providing good content, versus the time you have to spend creating the list, and the profit you make from sending out the newsletter.

You could also consider outsourcing the job of finding the good forum posts, by posting a job at site like www.elance.com. You wouldn’t have to pay top dollar because you don’t need anyone with any particular skills apart from common sense.  Just note down what you want them to look for, and get them to send you a list of good posts from the forums you identify for them.

If they do a good job, you could hire them to do the job for you each week/fortnightly or whatever you choose.  This way, you have the content for your newsletter all done for you.

I will state the obvious by saying that if you can, it’s always better to publish your own high quality unique content.  But if you are not able, or simply don’t want to do that, then publishing a regular list of top forum posts is a great alternative way to create content for an e-mail newsletter.

Wishing you success,

Jason Lewis