The amount of traffic that you can get from forums can vary greatly. Some busy forums will be well worth the effort. Always look for those that have a high turnover of comments. If nobody has left a post for several weeks then ignore it. You will just be talking to thin air ( some would say a bit like being married.)
It should go without saying that you need to find a forum that covers your niche. Hardley worth going on a betting forum when your site is about curry receipes, although I am sure that some gamblers do like a curry, but you get the point.
Another really important point is not to just wade in and pimp your site. You will be ignored at best and the worst case scenario is that you will be seen as a spammer and get banned from the forum.
The best course of action I find is to get a feel for the site before you post, have a read of the favourite topics. Then when your ready join in with helpful comments. Eventually you become a trusted member of that community and peope will naturally be curious about what you do and check you out.
Never overlook a well used forum for advice, we are all learning as our businesses evolve and I have made some really useful contacts in this way. So remember a forum in your particular niche will be full of valuable information.
Some search engines index highly active forums. So it is possible to get a trickle of traffic this way too.
I think the most important thing I have learned is to be yourself, otherwords don’t try to sound like a guru if your not. I think people see through this pretty quickly and all you do is lose trust. Talk about the things you do know about and when you learn about new topics pass that on. You can easily establish yourself as an expert in your own field in this way.
I do have success in this way with traffic so it does work.
If anyone has any other ideas on how they use forums I would love to hear them.

Andy Beveridge

Found this article and thought it might be of use.
Submitting Your Website to Search Engines.

If you have a web-based business or if a significant portion of your business is done on the web through your website, then the best advertising and marketing is done by submitting to a search engine. No amount of press release, newspaper or radio ad, banner ad, spam email or newsletter will achieve the same results, although, maybe effective in a small proportion.

Beware of companies that promise automatic submission of your website to hundreds of search engines which are but only false promises. The best way to submit your website for search engine ranking and inclusion is to do it yourself or to hire an expert to do it manually, by contacting the search engine companies and directories. This is a mistake I made myself. I thought I could buy my way in, just not true.

Before you begin to submit your website to search engines ensure your websites are thoroughly designed to the professional quality using the right key words, good graphics and pictures and the relevant content. Don’t submit websites that are incomplete. While submitting to a search engine, make sure to provide information about your website, keywords and any other information that may be pertinent, including the name and contact information of your business.

Mere submission to search engine companies does not guarantee that your site would be immediately listed and the ranking will be high. Because there are thousands of new websites coming up every day and it may take quite sometime before they take up your site for review by human editors. One important factor to remember while submitting site is to include a site map of your website which makes the crawling easy for the web robots. Search engines like ‘http://www.google.com’ hardly considers submissions without sitemaps.

Wow what a week! First of all in a vain attempt to recapture my youth I started jogging. Result one torn cartilidge (ouch!)
Then I noticed something different in the behaviour of my 18 year old cat. To cut a long story short it turns out she has kidney disease, very common in old cats. I have to put her on a drip every other day. I have always had a fear of needles but her need is far greater than my fear and so we have been coping.
On the business front things have been moving along really well. The launch of the two new sites is very close(watch this space)
Really looking forward to working with everyone on the listbuildingwithandy.com site. It will be a great platform for all of us involved to really take off and make our online presence profitable.
The shootavideo.info site is also about a week a way. That one is going to be a lot of fun. Hope to see you all over there.
Also through the power of Twitter found a great site with loads of useful information. You might want to check it out. http://www.suhaimirahman.com/
Talk real soon.

Andy Beveridge

Hello to everyone.
I have been a bit quiet on here for awhile, because iv’e been really busy working on my first ebook. Its going to be availble on a new site called shootavideo.info
Guess what! its going to be FREE!
The site will cover all aspects of video. From shooting your very first one, right through to marketing a product. There will be another FREE ebook on Youtube promotion later, also to be released at shootavideo.info
So I hope you can see that I have been a busy chap trying to give you all some value.
This whole online journey for me has been very exicting. Specially now its all building momentum. I really hope that you are all getting results as well.
Keep planning and keep doing at least one thing every day.
Most important of all don’t loose focus.
For now.
Andy Beveridge.