Comments on: How Do You Make Money From Your Online Forums?

By: How Have You Tried to Make Money From Your Online Community? I Still Want to Know! » ManagingCommunities.com

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:31:57 +0000

[...] in January, I asked you how you made money with your online community. This was for an upcoming series of articles on all of the different ways to monetize an online [...]

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:54:28 +0000

Thanks for sharing that, Techie. Good stuff.

Patrick

By: Techie

Techie — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:17:23 +0000

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.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 02:51:16 +0000

Thanks so much for the comments Sue, Jeremy and Ikenna. I really appreciate it. Some great, great stuff here! :)

Patrick

By: Ikenna

Ikenna — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:01:46 +0000

Adsense is the only thing that has worked for me.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:15:34 +0000

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

By: Sue

Sue — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:00:46 +0000

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.

By: Sue

Sue — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 19:54:01 +0000

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.”

By: Toodlepip

Toodlepip — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:16:01 +0000

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/

By: Tweets that mention How Do You Make Money From Your Online Forums? » ManagingCommunities.com -- Topsy.com

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:09:34 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Brandon Eley, Patrick O'Keefe, ManagingCommunities, Scott Fox, Author, DianaEnnen and others. DianaEnnen said: RT @iFroggy: How Do You Make Money From Your Online Forums? I WANT TO KNOW! http://bit.ly/4QG0OC [...]