When you work online, it can sometimes be a lonely road to trawl. Affiliate marketing forums tend to assist with that.

For one,

When you're trying to make it online and say perhaps your spouse isn't clued up to what you're up to, like the technical ins and outs. The times when you want to talk things over and come up with someone else's perspective on how your website is performing, even the CTR you get from your articles to your site and then from the site to to the merchant page.

Often times, in your offline community people aren't familiar with the online terms of what you're talking about.

You could say a back-link and folks won't know what the heck you're on about. Same goes for link wheels. Maybe even AdSense.

Afterall...

It's hard enough to wrap your own head around even half of the lingo that's used.

This is some of the things that using an affiliate marketing forum will help you with. You can be in contact with a community of people that are both at the stage you're at in your business as well as those that have been there, moved through the hurdles you could be challenged with and be able to learn from experienced folks on how best to deal with some of the challenges facing you.

This kind of support (for me) is a critical element of working online. Not just because you're in contact with others that are in the same game and can offer assistance when you need it but because the online world is ever changing.

Take the last Google update. The panda farce. Primarily aimed at content farms hitting a load of bigger sites like Ezinearticles.com and eHow among others. While it took it's toll on the directories, they had the finances to recover. Some of their affected authors relied on that traffic source and wouldn't have been so lucky.

If it weren't for me having an affiliate marketing forum on hand to get the insights into what was going on, I'd be thinking article marketing was dead in the water.

As it happened though, while many were affected by the panda update and lost a lot of traffic coming back to their websites, there were plenty of WA members that gained extra exposure and can still take advantage of writing sophisticated content for both users and search engines alike.

It's a fine art to get the balance of, and an affiliate marketing forum could be the best thing you have in your IM toolbox.

There's plenty of them around but you have to be careful which forum you use to discuss affiliate marketing. A decent one is going to end up being like your second family.

A lot of them will not have very stringent rules on promotional activity. This can lead you down the wrong path if folks are just going to jump on the newcomer to the community and try and make a buck off you.

This is something that the affiliate marketing forum within wealthy affiliate does not have.

We're a family of members and like family....we don't rip folks off.

In fact...

If we come across some nifty stuff that could help, the owners insist that it goes in a dedicated thread for promotions. That helps us with purchase decisions as well. Often before I buy anything IM related I'll use their search function to find out what the others are saying about it.

In terms of IM tools there's very little we need on top of WA. Premium themes look cool and stuff but they're not essential. Keyword software...WA's got it online. Desktop tools, so much can go wrong. They help dig deeper and stuff, but again...not essential. The only essential thing needed is a community of like-minded folks, staying abreast of the online business changes and being a part of an affiliate marketing forum to keep up to date. WA is the only one I use and recommend. Doesn't mean their the only place in town. Google it and you'll find tons.

Even if you don't contribute.

Find one you can at least watch the conversations unfold and learn from the discussions.