The online internet marketing world can indeed be a mine field and finding the right
forum to find out the information you need as an affiliate to achieve the best results with the website you have is not easy.
When looking for an affiliate forum it is important to look for three keys areas;
1) The audience the forum appeals to, for example abestweb appeals to the US facing audience whereas a forum such as a4u appeals to the UK audience. You may not be necessarily looking for a forum which appeals to a geographical location and more of a demographical audience such as online gaming or the adult industry. Make sure whatever you do you find a forum which appeals to this audience.
2) Make sure to share information with other affiliates and webmasters before requesting link trades or services. As going straight into requesting link trades will make you look unprofessional and make it less likely for the webmaster to trade links with you.
3) Be a regular on the forum and although you do not need to be a forum junkie it is important to make yourself known and do at least couple of decent posts per month.
4) Make use of the signature and the posts you to help build up your link volume without it looking like spam. Some forums request you do 10 or so posts before being able to use a link. Avoid spamming the forums as this just works against you.
Having a food forum presence as an affiliate will ultimately result in it being easier to trade links, set up affiliate deals and get people working with you. However it is not essential to be present on the forums as an affiliate it sure does help as well as let you know how others around you are performing and any tricks of the trade you may be missing.