Monetize Forum

Anybody care to share opinions? I have thought up a topic for a forum that is unbelievably under served. The potential number of users of such a forum is huge due to relevance and timeliness for such a forum. Short of posting on forums, I know nothing about them. Any thoughts?

 

How much traffic is your community getting? I'm averaging $5 to $10/day just from adsense ads.

You can take a look at how I monetized my forum at Virtual pet list - there's an ad in the nav bar, and two in show thread.
Here are a few articles on monetizing a forum:
Revenue: Low costs, high profits from site merchandising!

You can also see about running kontera and adsense on your forums.

 

Adsense is doing pretty good on the forums I owned. Personally, I always earned more by selling advertisements directly from buyers here at DigitalPoint and other webmaster forums, just a suggestion

 

That's sometimes the best way to earn money - especially if your traffic is good enough.

 

Thanks guys. I really appreciate both of you taking time to answer me. For months I have wanted to set up some sort of revenue generating web endeavor. I know it's possible to make a profit. I just wasn't sure where to start. But of you have been helpful.

 

You're very welcome. I remember when I first started off as a webmaster, it took me a while to start earning money.

 

How can I use and configure adsense ads on my own site?
does it needs to have page rank on site for adsense ads to appear?

thanks

 

google adsense will check if the age of your site is enough (6 months for not so rich countries like mine)
to put ads on it and if your site contains quality articles. They will check if your website is deserving for the adsense.

 

I say you first try to find some CPA offers related to your forum. Then you can record your income with them and then try out adsense like others recommended. I say to try the CPA offers first is because chances are the CPA offers will be more profitable, but adsense will be more reliable long term (don't have to update ads, etc).

 

I once owned a large community forum and based on my observation, adsense isn't really good for forum websites. You'll just get $0.01 always or most of the time Adsense will not credit clicks that you're getting from it.

If your forum is really popular and getting lots of traffic, then you better contact big companies on your area that is related to your forum and offer them banner space for their companies' service. Big companies who're operating off-line usually have a big budget for such advertisements compared to getting customers online who are mostly cheap.

Another idea is, open a paid membership area where these member will be able to access important forum sections and threads where they can get lots of knowledgeable information.

 

Putting ads on it will earn you some income.
If you've a got a lot of members though then mail them some related offer/product maybe once a month.
For example if it's a weight loss forum you could mail them a weight loss CPA offer or if it's a gaming forum you could mail them an iPad/iPhone offer etc.

 

You can add banner ads or even Google AdSense to forums.