topr8 - 9:53 am on Jan 3, 2012 (gmt 0)

... i sell the kind of widget where i get lots of emails with questions of various types from people who certainly won't be buyers,

so i set up a forum on a new domain and answer the questions there, if they post the question, when i get an email via the website i refer them to the forum, virtually no-one ever bothers to post there - i guess the registering process is too much for them (even though it is very simple!)

the forum has slowly come to rank for the odd term and i get the occasional referal to the ecom site from it.