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How Do You Make Money From Your Online Forums?
I’m planning a series on the many ways of generating revenue from your online forums. Before I get into this, however, I wanted to start by asking you: how are you making money from your online forums?
Please go into detail. For example, if you work with advertising networks, say which ones. If you work with an ad market place of some sort, say which one. Basically, if you use a company where other forums can sign up or request more information to join for themselves, I want to know the name of that company.
I want to know everything, from your smallest revenue generating outlet to your largest. On top of your submissions, I will also be polling friends of mine and asking them how they generate revenue from their online forums. Plus, I’ll be sharing my own methods and all of the random opportunities that I have been pitched on.
If you’re a company who is looking to help online community owners make money, and you haven’t already spoken to me, this is your chance to pitch me in the comments here (something I wouldn’t ordinarily allow).
The goal is to hopefully turn you onto new ways of generating revenue from your online community and I look forward to digging in. Please pass this post onto any forum administrators you know, as well, as I’d love to hear their methods.
Thank you for participating.
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We usually have ads on forums as added value for the editorial sponsorships, but am aware of this ad bnetwork which may be of interest to some of your readers:
http://www.linqia.com/
Currently direct ads, and ad networks such as Google. I think the key is to not swamp your site with too many ads, otherwise it detracts from the content and also people become “ad-blind.”
Forgot to add: A Vendor section in the forum can work well too. In order to keep the vendors contained though it should be stated at the beginning of the agreement that their own Vendor section will be the only place that they would be allowed to personally interact with
the membership. I think a Vendors section can be quite helpful in many ways, including:
* Community members will have a direct avenue to the advertiser to ask questions about the vendors products and services.
* Allows the “vendor” to be in charge of moderating their own section giving them complete control over the type of postings/topics made in their section (within community guidelines).
* The vendor’s products/services are easily found within the community, but they do not infringe on discussions that are taking place elsewhere on the site.
I’ve spent the last year trying out several new avenues for money making on my websites.
My top earner will always be ads I sell directly, as there is no middle man, and I charge on monthly tenancy, as opposed to a PPC or impression based rate.
2nd is AdSense, by quite a bit.
After that things get more interesting. There are several forms of affiliate marketing I’m trying out. My top two currently are eBay and Amazon.com Affiliate ads. I’m also a member of Commission Junction, which is an affiliate network for a bunch of companies (GoDaddy, Bass Pro Shops, Adidas, Mr. Beer).
With all these advertising methods, how do I possibly fit them all on one site? Google Ad Manager. I have 2 ads slots across the top of my pages. Within these slots I rotate ads from all of these sources. To see this all in action, check out http://www.outdoorgameplayers.com/forum
Adsense is the only thing that has worked for me.
Thanks so much for the comments Sue, Jeremy and Ikenna. I really appreciate it. Some great, great stuff here! :)
Patrick
I use PHPbb for my forums because there haven’t been enough members and donation to upgrade to vBulletin yet. I found a good modification called Advertisement Management which allows ads to be placed in places through the ACP. Right now I have an adsence skyscraper after the first post on each topic and no other ads in the forum. The modification can also be set not to show ads to certain groups. The earnings aren’t huge but the forum is very small and I think it’s one of the best and smallest ad placements.
Thanks for sharing that, Techie. Good stuff.
Patrick