best way to monetize a forum

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DanielQ

DanielQ

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Jun 29, 2008
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A police state.
Okay, I run a forum. It's fairly active (1,000 posts a day). I get about 250 users logged in on any given day. Nearly 250,000 posts and over 5,000 members.

Now... how can I successfully monetize it? Seems I've tried everything. I've run adsense, affiliate offers, private ads - but it seems the forum user sterotype is true. They simply ignore the ads.

Any suggestions?
 


I like using intellitxt for small-mid sized forums. It could piss some of your users off though.

You could also force users to a full page ad every 15-20 pages, but again it is annoying as hell and will piss users off.
 
-Matt- said:
I like using intellitxt for small-mid sized forums. It could piss some of your users off though.

You could also force users to a full page ad every 15-20 pages, but again it is annoying as hell and will piss users off.
Click to expand...
Inline ads ftw!
 
Does it just stand alone, by itself, as a forum, or is it a part of a larger site?

I would think the forum needs to stay unobtrusive and be the draw to your big site that has affiliate offers. What you could possible sell to writers, who knows? Maybe expand it into a directory for users to self-publish to.

A community site based on Joomla! or other CMS could have writing helps, contests, user article galleries, etc that would support ads better.

Of course you can use it to spam your other money sites.:D

Don't make the forum a pain.
 
Writers tend to read frequently. Maybe stir up some user interaction with a "book club" type section. Users vote from a list of books and then discuss the chosen one for a month. Of course you conveniently provide the book to your members at a discount.

You could also try looking into the large number of self-publishing companies (ie Lulu) and see if they have affiliate programs. Then make a post about how you had something published/created with the company, you really recommend them, and thus will be advertising their service on the site.

Hmm...what else. Set up a free hosting service for user blogs or whatever and advertise on them.

With forums it's all about user interaction. Fire them up about something interesting that you can provide and profit from in the process.
 
Let the users monetise it for you -- a book club like elime suggests is a great idea for a writing forum. You could also set up an internal BST community dealing in whatever the hell creative writers buy and sell, and charge a nominal fee for listings, premium features on listings, etc. If they're all that creative, they've got to be smart enough to know that a forum doesn't run itself and that the Server Fairy isn't trading you bandwidth for buttsex every night, so some sort of community-focused service for the members that is not outlandishly priced should be embraced by them.


Frank
 
A too like the book club idea.

But think outside the box a little. elime's spot on with the Print on Demand services (i.e. LuLu), and there are more and more of those every year.
Do those affiliate programs cover getting new publisher on board? If so, hock that.
If not, what else do writers need? Is there an affiliate program for getting ISBNs?
Maybe some other software packages could be useful.

Also, if you've got that many people on there, it's obviously a strong community.
Communities bring in people that want to be known as being part of the community. Make some community merchandise on CafePress or something.
i.e. I would definitely buy a WickedFire Hoodie or T. It's got a cool logo, but I'm also proud to be part of this community, and would wear that proudly.

My last idea would be to act as the sales point for the writers stories themselves.
Run an eBook store off your site. Sell their books in some sort of eBook format (make sure it's one that the most book readers can read, like .PRC, and not just for one format like Kindle's .AZW or MSR's .LIT) and split the profit in a way that you think is fair. Like 80:20.
 
Maybe a premium section for a very small fee, or something like a badge or user title for a very small fee to make them feel special?
 
Add an extra ad unit or 2 at the top of the page only for guests, you can do this with conditionals. 1 leaderboard or 2 large/medium rectangles. You will get clicks on them from search engine visitors and they will not annoy the users.

Add an Adsense 468x15/728x15 link unit near the "breadcrumb". Something like this, but blended well.....

breadcrumb1bf7.jpg
 
Poetry.com is an oldie but goodie that fits with your demo. Just got to dig and find offers that fit your audience.


fm1234 said:
they've got to be smart enough to know that a forum doesn't run itself and that the Server Fairy isn't trading you bandwidth for buttsex every night
Frank
Click to expand...

** Frank that is signature worthy! I tell my mom the same thing all the time**
 
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