Monetizing a forum?

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aim high

aim high

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Anyone have success monetizing a forum? any other methods other then adsense and intext ads?
 


private sponsorships are the way to go. stop agonizing about the pennies from adsense and know what you'll get each month. well..i take that bad. do that and then adsense pennies will be like a bonus.
 
Private forum sections.
But you'll need a lot of members and great content for that to work.
 
Unarmed Gunman said:
The best way I have found to monetize a forum, is to sell it.
Click to expand...

Lol, nice.

But yeah, regular users of the forum will quickly become blind to adverts so you'll have an atrocious click through rate and revenue. Unless you really have a passion to build a community around a certain topic then I wouldn't bother. It'll probably take you a good six months, if not 2 years, to establish a reasonably large user base.
 
There's no straight answer, it all depends on your forum and what it has to offer.

If you're going to sell advertising, find the combination that's most beneficial to your advertiser. Out of all the networks that advertise on WickedFire, the ones who have grown the most are those who aimed for branding and long-term relationships.
 
selling ad inventory directly to vendors
premium membership subscriptions
recurring newsletter (with affiliate links)
automated welcome PMs (with affiliate links tastefully mentioned. be creative.)
selling text links

depending on niche, you could also cater to your users and make it easy for them to find X products on ebay by making an nice phpBay site and branding it hard on the forums. this has worked well for me.

alternatively, if ebay doesn't have products specifically for your community, consider creating an information product and selling it either branded under your forum brand, or as a 3rd party (which you obviously review highly, etc.)
 
Why does no one ever say "merchandising" when this question gets asked?
We go ape shit over the WF Tshirts that get made for Affiliate Summit, and those of us that can't attend would happily fork over good money for one... Just goes to show the power of good design and merchandise.

Of course, this only works if your forum is a real community.

Shit, make a decent logo, get some community spirit going, think up a witty slogan, then punch that shit all over some hats and tshirts on CafePress.
 
Even though the guy that runs it sort of stumbled into doing some clever things without any business sense, the forums at Something Awful have some really creative ways of making money. Of course it's impossible to replicate that model without a similarly feverish demographic, but banning people constantly only to have them pay another $10 to re-reg and, particularly, letting people pay to change each other's avatars as a way of insulting one another is really genius. You can watch people get into wars where they're changing each other's avatars and changing their own back and each change of another's avatar is $10 while each change of one's own is $5. It's a little cash register.
 
on-on said:
Even though the guy that runs it sort of stumbled into doing some clever things without any business sense, the forums at Something Awful have some really creative ways of making money. Of course it's impossible to replicate that model without a similarly feverish demographic, but banning people constantly only to have them pay another $10 to re-reg and, particularly, letting people pay to change each other's avatars as a way of insulting one another is really genius. You can watch people get into wars where they're changing each other's avatars and changing their own back and each change of another's avatar is $10 while each change of one's own is $5. It's a little cash register.
Click to expand...

Seconded..

With a strong following such as the one WF enjoys, merchandise would do great. Where are the WF zippos, mousepads, condoms, and snuggies?

Just promise me you don't take it too far. :D
 
I would either sell it or sell some ad space on the forum. Adsense like the guys said above is a waste of time because your regular visitors are numb to them.

Selling ad space on the forum itself is better because you've got that monthly residual income coming in and you don't have to focus on clicks.
 
I don't know why no one mentioned it...

What do people go to forums for? To read posts
What posts have the most views? Sticky posts

2 ideas to get you started,
1. You can deceptively market your own stuff in non obvious ways in which you are trying to help, you have to make it fit like a page in a book though or your forum will feel like shit.
2. You can sell x amount of time to have a sticky post to advertisers (I'd go for a month, charge based on what you think you can get) Make an "above the fold" section where you can hold around 5 sticky posts.
 
I have had good success with sponsorship and merchandising, especially with tightly-focused sites that catered to a very specific interest or a specific geolocation. I've also tried -- with mixed success -- setting up mini operations that cater to the interests of the forum, ie. sites/products/services that are put into market specifically and exclusively to the forum's participants. Having access to all of the traffic stats and posts gives one a great insight into what might appeal to the users.


Frank
 
paid membership works quite well for me, restrict avatars, images in sigs etc unless they pay for em. 5$ works ok. Not going to get rich over it unless you have a large userbase though.
 
Premium Paid Memberships work quite well and so does Adsense if positioned well. Private forum sponsorships have worked for me as well. Forget donations - it's not worth it as people then think they are above the rules ...
 
Forums are horrible to try to make money off of. I got my start into SEO and advertising from forums - just too much time involved, too little payout, the people that are on forums are smarter than you think. Too much CPU and bandwidth, your best bet is get it big and sell it to a noob.

Forums suck. Make sites.
 
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