Hi all, I have been thinking of starting a forum (not sure exactly what topic yet). Now, I know I will not make huge money off the start, I understand this. Getting a forum going will take time. But my question is, WHAT can be used on forums to create income (assuming you have decent traffic and amount of users)?
You need to make sure you set out google ads in the right place! - You should display more google ads in POSTS when your a guest - Have a google ad in the footer and possibly in the header. Ask for donations offering nice premium ship features. Look to sell 468x60 ads around your forum.
I agree that AdSense is a great way to monetize a forum. You can also charge persons to advertise there or even charge members a small fee to remain a member. The validity period can be per month, per year, or even lifetime membership.
The obvious way that we all know is Adsense, basically, place their ads around your forum and they will pay you per click. Other ways are to manually sell advertisements or you could have a VIP area of which members will have more features than regular members (but the effectiveness of this depends on the niche & extra features members will get). You could also sell your own products/services; e.g. if its a forum related to webmasters, then you can sell eBooks, Templates and Scripts (or give them away for free to your VIPs).
As Captain already said - VIP/Premium area .. Add some good info for free users and more on Premium area ! Add subscription module ( 1-2$/month for viewing Premium area ). In this way you can get at least 100$/month if you have some good content
On some of my forums, i use adsense, and the occasional CPA... i could recommend different methods depending on your forum aims etc niche... my forums would work differently to that of an average forum creator etc, it all depends how you run it, or what you offer to the user etc
I think if you run a large, niche forum that is well designed and moderated then you should be looking at selling link/ad spots on a monthly basis. Run adsense while you're building it up, but that's a long process.
At theneoplace.net, a forum I frequent, Neopets Cheat programs are offered to users. There is a level system using rep and post count to increase, and certain levels can download certain things... Or you can pay $x.xx per day/week/month/year to get premium, and you have access to Premium Only programs. The owner, Dez, is making 2-3,000 a month currently, and the community is fairly small... Not to mention she didn't even make most of the programs, her members did! (Oh and if you are into Neopets/Marapets/Subeta/Gaia, Kat referred you! xD)
Try and put an optin box in the centre right at the top of the page so you can capture emails. Find an affiliate program to market some products related to the niche
Adsense and affiliates are the obvious choices. Offering paying members the ability to switch off ads might help, provided that you still get plenty of non-paying users who will see ads. You could also consider some kind of sponsorship deal if you can get the interest of a relevant business.
From my past experience,the most profitable part of the forum is by selling membership and sticky post. If you're forum getting lot of buy and sell thread,then i'm sure the seller willing to pay you a certain fee in exchange of the his thread remain at the top. By doing this you can make money out of thin air.
If your forum gets huge you can charge subscription fees. I think "offtopic" forum did this once (and still may)...