How to convert sales in a forum?

[daddyo]

As mentioned in my previous "Ranked #1 in Google..." post, I run a medium-sized forum where we post lots of various items for sale from the tons of vendors we're affiliated with.

Since we're not a Fatwallet or a Slickdeals, we don't quite have the userbase to talk up an item and generate sales, so I'm wondering about other ways we can better convert product listings into sales?

We don't have the ability to get real fancy with an item listing inside a forum thread (we can't create mini landing pages for each product we list -- it'd be too time consuming and forum threads aren't meant to duplicate the detail of landing pages).

Since we post numerous items every day, I'm interested in something simple I can do (or change) to generate more interest for people and thus generate more sales.

Any thoughts?

 

[HarveyJ]

Some fourm scripts allow you to install a points system.
You could use this points system to assign points when people visit links. People that visit the landing page (thus stuffing your cookie hopefully) of the product get a point, and people can exchange insane amounts of points for useless forum trinkets, like crap for their avatar, or even physical goods if you're making enough money out of all those people foolishly loading themselves up with your Mrs Fields goodness.