Making Money with Forums: 15 Effective Monetization Tips for Forum Owners
As you can probably tell from my gigantic list of internet marketing and webmaster forums, I’m very interested in online communities. Interacting in forums is probably the quickest way you can learn how to effectively make money online. There’s absolutely no cost involved except time and an innate willingness to learn from others.
For site owners and entrepreneurs, forums can be a useful way to attract, maintain and monetize a large number of recurring and new visitors. The question is are forums a lucrative business venture to pursue? And is creating a forum an easy way to make money?
The general consensus seems to be that forums are profitable only if you’ve got lots of members, traffic and valuable content. Otherwise, forums are difficult entities to monetize successfully, because of the low contextual ad CTR universally experienced in all forums.
15 Effective Ways to Monetize a Forum
I’ve been thinking of building an online community/forum and so did some asking around and research on the topic of forum monetization. I’m primarily concerned with this because I’m already familiar with the usual traffic building, administrative and forum marketing tactics.
Here is a comprehensive list of methods which you can use to monetize your forum. They apply for all niches, though optimal results will be achieved when you have a significantly large and loyal user community.
- Offer Paid Subscriptions
Examples of paid subscription models includes offering premium features and services, materials, content for members who are willing to pay monthly or one-time fees.
SEOBlackHat Forum has been very successful with this format. Uniqueness of content and user loyalty are two important factors which determine how well subscriptions will work for you.
- Use Relevant Affiliate programs.
Web Hosting Ads work well with Webmaster forums. Dating website ads such as Mate1.com are compatible with lifestyle forums. The trick is to find a affiliate program that fits perfectly with your target audience. - Make Private Advertising arrangements.
From what I’ve heard, this is one of the best earners for forum owners. Your ad selling power will depend on the strength of your traffic and user community. Be pro-active in approaching advertisers and businesses. - Seek Donations from members.
Success in seeking donations will depend on community loyalty, forum age and quality of interaction/resources offered. Offer permanent links on a donor page to encourage donations.An example: Digital Point will give you a permanent PR 7 link when you donate $500 or more to offset their server costs. Being a fan of the forum, I’ll willingly donate even if I didn’t get a link back. User loyalty and interest in the community is most important here.
- Use Forums for Cross-promotional marketing
Forum traffic is very useful when you have your own affiliate program or a main money site. Forum members are potential customers. Don’t neglect them and focus on placing on-site ads alone. - Set up a Fee-based marketplace
This allows members to buy, sell or trade products and services. SitePoint and Earners Forum offer marketplaces which charge you a small fee in order to make a listing to sell any websites. - Sell Sponsored “Sticky” Threads.
Every forum owner knows that sticky threads are the most viewed item in every forum. Getting a monthly sponsor for them is easy because you’ve have a lot of traffic leverage to negotiate pricing. - Find Sponsors for Forum sub-sections.
If you have dozens of subsections with different topics, this will allow you to offer relevant advertising opportunities for potential sponsors. E.G. Car Insurance ads for a subsection on Automobiles/Import Tuning. - Sell Sponsored Text links or Messages
This allows for a lot of flexibility and offers advertisers maximum SEO benefit by allowing them to have keywords within content. These are usually placed under the first post of each thread. Footer links can also apply if your forum has many indexed pages, each with internal PR. - Develop and Promote a Forum newsletter
A newsletter can be used to update members and promote affiliate products personally. Great for niche forums who offer troubleshooting on specific products/topics. Remember to include opt-in options during the registration process. - Create a Blog for Your Forum
A blog on the same domain as the forum is useful if your forum has a large user base or sees a lot of traffic. It also allows you to sell paid reviews while offering another ad option for advertisers who want more exposure and personal recommendations. - Pick up some Adsense Optimization Tips
Learning how to optimize Adsense for forums is fairly important when you’ve never used contextual advertising for forums before.The learning process also involves continual tweaking and experimentation once you have enough traffic to allow for accurate ad placement testing.
- Search Optimize your Forum
To continuously increase the number of forum members requires you to develop strong organic or search traffic. Developing some basic understanding of Forum SEO can be very helpful. - Create an Online Store
This allows you to sell affiliate products or your own products/tools. This can be digital or physical products, tools and can include relevant feeds from affiliate websites. - Create an Affiliate program to Attract Advertisers
An affiliate program rewards users for bringing in advertisers. This is a good way to give back to your readers while making full use of your community to develop monetization opportunities. One of my favorite tactics.
A word of caution..
I wouldn’t suggest starting a forum and expecting it to make money in a few months. Growing a forum can take considerable time and personal effort so if you don’t have the time, energy or money to make it successful, you’ll be better off blogging for money.
A sobering note from Shawn Hogan, Digital Point honcho.
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Interesting article Maki, especially for me who just started up a new forum
Now I’m by no means an expert, but I have some experience running larger forums in the past, and I overall have to agree with what Shawn said. I ran a forum which had 20,000+ something members, and thousands of posts each day, yet I made the bulk of income from that site through the content sections, even though it had far less traffic compared to the forums.
In my opinion it’s easier to monetize static content, as opposed to user generated content that powers forums. I reckon that if you ask Lee Dodd that question, he’ll disagree
The strongest selling points of a forum when it comes to advertising however, are the actual members. Often they will be dedicated and develop a sense of belonging to the forum, and that’s what makes forums valuable in my opinion. Making money off of that however, isn’t always easy.
That’s quite a sobering comment from Shawn. I’ve always been tempted to start a forum but you really need to nail the right niche if you want to make any money out of it. Plus there’s a hell of a lot of work involved just getting it off the ground.
Dan.
As I make my newest project that will indeed hopefully have a large forum for discussion I really appreciate those tips. Those are really great ones some I never even thought of.
Really great points… Before reading your article i thought its not possible to make money thru forums.. Thx for changing my view..
” Plus there’s a hell of a lot of work involved just getting it off the ground. ”
That seems to be the general consciousness when it comes to forums. And while it’s certainly true that it takes a lot of work and effort to get a forum off the ground, it’s also a long forgotten fact that managing a large forum takes just as much, if not more effort! Overall, starting and maintaning a forum is a large job, and not to be underestimated.
I’ve been running a forum for over 4 years now and they are by far not the best money makers.
Some things I’ve learned.
Don’t put ads between posts, members hate it.
Don’t expect a lot from donations.
Run contests, I do a monthly one and the prize is their photo (it’s a photo forum) on the main page of the site.
Getting sponsors will make you more money then adsense will.
Look into auction ads, its a pretty OK setup.
Depending on the topics, get an affiliate to match up with stuff that is being discussed on the net.
Paid memberships rarely work, don’t think about it unless you really have something unique to offer or will give things like sigs or avatars to those who contribute.
” Don’t put ads between posts, members hate it. ”
I have to disagree with that. If done right, it doesn’t have to be too bothersome. A small and unobtrusive 468×60 banner per page seems to be accepted by most members in the forums I’ve worked with myself. Of course, a well integrated AdSense banner will cause less fuzz than a flashing yellow and red graphical banner.
But yeah, all in all, I agree with your statement that that selling your own ads has much bigger potential than for instance AdSense when it comes to forums.