I was visiting a bulletin board http://www.webdevboard.com/ earlier this evening when I came across a posting from a very short-sighted webmaster:

"With 360+ members, I don't think I'll 'get more views' to my site 'than ever before'. All I'm going to get is more time wasted..."

Here was my reply:

You may be right. This board may not produce "more hits for your site than ever before."

But your comment as to how posting here will be a complete waste of time is very short-sighted. If you were to post constructive messages, you might just find a few people visiting your site from this board.

My traffic comes from thousands of sites -- a few visitors here and a few visitors there. It all adds up to be considerable traffic. For the last several months, the http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/default.asp bulletin board has been generating hundreds of visitors to my domain every month. I only have one other referrer that generates more visitors to my site. My link appears in three different threads in the board -- and all original posts were placed by my customers talking about my services.

While this traffic is considerable, it does not hold a candle to the traffic generated from the search engines, but new customer questionaires indicate that 90% of my business comes through referals from my customers. These referals are either direct referals or they are the result of referals made in boards just like this one.

You might consider taking the time to post actual constructive and interesting messages in this board a complete waste of your time, but it might just be that your entire promotion schedule is also a complete waste of your time.