I want to ask you guys .. Does a forum get a high CTR ? And what is the best place of ads inside forums ?
You should do what DigitalPoint does: show larger ads to a non-member and another good placement idea is at the bottom of the forum. after people are done reading posts, they need to go somewhere, right?
I definately feel that you will get a low CTR for a forum.Adsense may not work in this case.But you can always try advertising too.
low CTR but another important point is, there will be no hardwork with a well established forum, it will run and update automatically.
If it's a webmasters revenue share forum u will get clicks because normally when a member likes an ad they click, in the same time don't forget to ask google for permession before starting a Revenue Share forum . If it's not a revenue share forum, and even not a webmasters forum you may get some clicks depend on your traffic and members + Ad Placment . Use any AdSense plug-in, hack, or mod for your forum to get it automated .
Who cares what the click thru rate on a forum is! The bottom line is how much money can you pull in from your forum site! And how much can you consistently pull in month after month..
No you probably wont' get a great CTR but with some aggressive integration you might be able to pull 2%, but in general your looking at a CTR of 0.5% - 1%. As for where is best, I'm a big fan of a leader board under the header and potentially a 280x336 between the first and second post, and then maybe a third ad unit or link unit after the final post. Check out this site to read up on monetizing forums: www.forumtrends.com The guy who runs that site knows some pretty good stuff and has some good suggestions. By the way just how big are your forums?
I'm doing well then I show ads for guests only since my users read almost every new post but never click, thus bringing the CTR down. I don't get much traffic though so that may also be the cause of the CTR.
we`ll, i don`t see a Forum as a income source, there are a few but... if you make a forum starting from the idea of making money, you will succeed nothing. you can let it a free simple and enjoying forum, and after 4-5k of users you can make it a revenue forum
Forums are famous for low ctr, a good position would be in the middle of posts if you are able to do that.
That would probably piss of all the members. A better solution would be to put a block ad under the first post, although that is still pretty annoying to most users. What I did was put a leaderboard under the title, and it's proving to be quite good.