How Have You Tried to Make Money From Your Online Community? I Still Want to Know!

Posted by Patrick on March 15th, 2010 in Generating Revenue

Back 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 community.

I’m happy to say that this series is coming along beautifully. I’ve talked to a number of different people, including those behind the scenes at some very large communities, and they have been kind enough to share all of their methods with me.

But, I still want more. I want to know what you do now and how it works. I want to know what you’ve tried in the past. I want to leave no stone unturned. Please tell me. I’m happy to keep your identity or your site a total secret: I’m just interested in the methods and the companies that you work with. In that case, please e-mail me. Otherwise, the comment section is also a good place.

Thank you in advance for helping me to ready this series. My hope is that our collective knowledge will benefit everyone and allow us all to generate more revenue, thereby ensuring the long term stability of our communities.

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6 Comments

JaysonFlint commented on March 15th, 2010 at 1:23 pm

RT @managecommunity: How Have You Tried to Make Money From Your Online Community? I Still Want to Know! http://bit.ly/aSroxi

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

ecomunidades commented on March 15th, 2010 at 2:48 pm

How Have You Tried to Make Money From Your Online Community? I Still Want to Know!: photo credit: f_trudeau
Back B… http://bit.ly/dqZpxy

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

Ricardo Bueno (@Ribeezie) commented on March 15th, 2010 at 2:39 am

Hi Patrick,

I re-read the section in your book that talks about monetizing. The two models that I’ve looked at are 1.) paid membership, 2.) advertising space. Personally, I’ve sold advertising space on blogs before. I’m guessing that this is a better route than the paid membership model?

I’m looking forward to reading the series and exploring this topic a bit more…

Patrick (@iFroggy) commented on March 15th, 2010 at 11:53 am

Thanks Ricardo! :)

Chris Guthrie (@ChrisGuthrie) commented on March 15th, 2010 at 7:31 pm

I tried making money with a video game forum I owned for several years by using Adsense and even at the height of it’s popularity (500k page views per month) I still only made $500 per month.

When I switched over to blogging I found it considerably easier to make money with blogs than with forums. (Granted I know the niche of my forum was low paying).

But beyond paid memberships what else can you really do? Advertisers know forums convert poorly and so it’s impossible to get into programs like Tribal Fusion.

Chris Guthrie

Patrick (@iFroggy) commented on March 15th, 2010 at 7:49 pm

Hey Mr. Guthrie,

Thanks for the comment and for sharing your experience. :) Through this series of posts, I hope to address this problem!

Thanks,

Patrick

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6 Comments