7 things you need to do to set up a Forex trading signal service

Almost every Forex trader with a reputable trading system dreams of starting their own signal service. Imagine having thousands of customers following your trading signals for a $49 monthly fee. Isn’t that something everyone dreams of?

Profitable trading systems or robots usually seem to be the most important thing to have when running such a service and people start to learn about how to set up a Forex signal service only after they have found a good source of signals. However, that is the most common mistake people make.

When you have a profitable trading strategy you will want to start selling signals immediately, so you should be prepared.

It’s not a rocket science to set up a signal service, but it’s not an easy task either. It will definitely take a lot of time and require a lot of effort if you are serious about this business. There are many things you’ll need to do to start and operate a Forex trading signals business, so read on to find out the 7 steps that you’ll need to take and things you’ll need to create or purchase.

Get a Forex trade copier program

Yes, that is correct, this is the first thing you should do. Whether you are going to purchase a full license or get this type of software for free from your broker or some other place, you will still need to spend a few days learning how to operate it. Most of them are really easy to use, but you still want to take your time and read the instruction manuals, test the software thoroughly, and start sending trading signals to your friends, partners or customers just to feel how all this works. It does take time and effort and it will not happen in one day. You may want to purchase the trade copier’s full unlimited license, but before that you will get a trial period of a month. There are several account copiers available and if you are going test each of them for at least a few weeks then this will take months for sure. It is OK to do this, you should not to start your signal service with bogus software and you should definitely take your time to test several trade copy programs.

By the time you have finished testing the various trade copiers wouldn’t it be great to have at least several automated trading robots running on your demo MT4 accounts? By the time you have learn how to use a trade copier application you may already have at least one of those robots making a profit.

Write sales copy

So now while your trade copier program is working you have time to do other things for your signal service. You can start creating content, sales copy, and text that you will use on your website to offer signal services to visitors. You should start with a short description about yourself and your trading style; it’s not your trading secret that you should explain and reveal, but people need to know what methods you use to trade currencies. Is it NFA compatible? Is it martingale or hedge? What maximum stop loss and what take profit do you use? What is the minimum account size that a customer should start with? How much should you risk per trade and how many open trades can there can be at the same time? These are the most frequently asked questions about trading signals and you should answer those on your website.

Don’t forget to add some pictures and a trading performance once you have that information.

You could hire someone to write sales copy for you, but I would strongly recommend that you do this yourself, because only you know the details of what exactly you are going to offer to your prospects. Other writers may take the money and write generalized sales, but it will not be tuned for your services. Of course it could be a great way to see how sales letters are written and then tune it up to match your service description, but you learn by doing, so be sure to participate in every detail when you’re setting up this service.

Get a hosting plan for your website

Usually you will have to get a hosting plan before you can create a website, especially if you use WordPress. On your website you will need to describe your service, show your trading performance and give other instructions on how to join and use your services. In short, you will use the content created in step 2.

If you start with purchasing an unlimited trade copier software you might need to get a hosting plan first. You should check the minimum requirements of the web server for your trade copier, as it will probably require more than the simple hosting plan that most websites use.

Create a website to welcome your visitors and potential customers

The easiest way to do this is to login into the control panel (cPanel) of your hosting account’s members’ area and use Fantastico. This tool lets you install WordPress in minutes. Once you’ve done you can upload the images and content that you created in step 2, choose a better looking template and install the necessary plugins.

If you do not have any trading signals to send, just keep testing the various trading robots and put a “Coming soon…” sign on your website.

You want to be ready to launch your service the moment you find a good trading signal source.

Do some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your website

There are a lot of SEO techniques, but you should focus on the best SEO practices and avoid any ‘black hat’ methods.

Start creating useful content and keep adding that to your website. If the content is truly valuable to visitors you will see that Google will pick up your website in no time. I would recommend writing articles, guides and free reports about trading signals. Create at least 2 posts each week and you will see your website gain authority within a few months.

The best SEO practices are to keep adding new quality content on your website, set unique meta tags for each page, use the most popular keywords for your service and link pages together with the right anchor text by using your main keywords.

You must understand that search engine optimization is not something that is done once and then be forgotten. SEO does not happen overnight either and it will take months to see the results, and even then it will only happen if you follow best practices. If you want to outsource this task, please be careful, because a lot of SEO firms will actually harm your rankings. If you want to do this yourself (it not that hard after all) make sure you learn from the best sources. Google itself have great webmaster guidelines and they share this information for free because they want you to build a quality website which can appear in their results.

Get a Forex trading signals source

So far you can see that we have a lot of time preparing and your service is not ready to start yet. What you need for a signal service are great and profitable trading signals. They can be produced manually or automatically. You need great trading signal source ideas that you could use for your new business.

If you are a manual trader you can definitely be the signal provider yourself, however this won’t allow you to run this business on autopilot.  You should consider automating your currency trading process.

I prefer automated currency trading as this allows you to set up and run your signal service on autopilot with no to little human intervention. So if you have an automated Forex trading robot it will be a great source of trading signals. Test as many robots as you have or find them online, but make sure you only choose those with a reputable trading history and proof that they work. Avoid scalping robots as that is not the best software to use to generate trading signals for your customers. It takes a lot of time to set up everything for a Forex signal service, and while you are working on those things you should keep testing as many trading robots as you can handle.

Start sending trading signals to your customers

OK. So by now I am sure you already have at least one MT4 EA that makes a profit, so it’s now time to start sending trading signals to your customers. You already have your trade copier software up and running, you’ve taken your time to study and learn how it works and it’s easy to connect your trading robot with the copier system. All that’s left is to attach the Server EA, that’s included with the trade copier, to the same MT4 account where your robot is running and it will start sending all upcoming trades to the customer accounts that are already connected.

Conclusion

Setting up a signal service the right way takes a lot of time and effort. It will cost money too. If you are serious about this you will definitely succeed, but if you trying to make a quick buck online just by selling any trading signals, with no reputable trading history and with little work, you will be sure to face failure very soon. You need time to build a community of traders following your trading signals’ performance history, and they will only convert into buyers when they begin to trust you.