Hi guys! I write this out of a bit of frustration. I do a radio show. I'm a 20 year radio veteran. I do a talk show. It's successful and my website is doing great. (It's a message board.) I've had the site for about 6 years. I've never figured out how to make money with it. I've tried Google Adsense but they always wind up pulling my ads. Again, I'm a RADIO person, not a BUSINESS person. I'm looking for suggestions on how to monetize my site. I'm not one of these people that thinks he's going to get RICH from having a website, but I DO think I should be making some kind of money from all the time I spend putting up content. I will leave the URL to the website, and I cannot tell you how much I would appreciate a response. Please go easy on me, and if you leave a response, please make it simple because I AM NOT A BUSINESS PERSON. lol. THANKS SO MUCH! http://kramersforum.com/forum/forum.php
At 88k rank, you're getting quite a bit of traffic. My website is ranked right under 300k and I get around 1,500 - 2,000 daily website visitors. Just create some banners that read something like "250 x 250 - This Banner Space Could Be Yours", then link it to a page that explains pricing with an inquiry form. If no one inquires about the ad space, just advertise it on here and other webmaster forums and I can pretty much guarantee you'll get some interested folks PMing you...
Is that usually the best way to do it? Also, what about pricing? For a website that gets that kind of traffic, how much would you charge for a banner ad per week and/or per month?
Don't look at Google Adsense as selling banner space is more profitable. Is there a particular niche or topic that people are going to your forum for?
Ethan, Some of it's about the radio show. The rest is either news content, humor, music, video games, etc. - just general discussion. It's not very niched.
I would work on what Jameyson MacDonald has proposed and add a couple banner ads. Looks like you are using vBulletin for your forum script and should be able to find some add-on's to make things easier for adding different banner ad space's to different sections of the site. The price you would charge would depend on what you feel your users would pay and the placement of ads on the site. People will pay more or less depending on where the ad is showing (ie: homepage, center, column, inner-pages, within posts). I personally would start out low and raise the price accordingly by the amount of people wanting ad space. Like they say price depends on supply and demand.
You can try to do some affiliate marketing if you think your visitors would buy something in particular. And you should know them well enough since it's your forum.
not sure about your forum, but I have seen people on fiverr sell commercial space on their radio shows, as for the forum, use some type of google alternative network, with your traffic, surely they would love to have you....
The best thing you can do is join a forum relevant to radio and put banners on your site. Or, find another network aside from Adsense that has radio related ads.
Just a random thought... I'm sure there are advertisements on your channel. Why not contact some of these advertisers and arrange something with them (e.g. Banner) At least it is related in a way.
I'm on Fiverr and do radio imaging and am getting a good response from that. Been doing it about a year now and have made several thousand dollars. I've put up a gig for endorsements where I"ll endorse your stuff for 5 bucks, and I'm really good at it but it hasn't taken off like the other radio production/voiceover gigs I have on there. I joined CPM FUN. Put the code in and it's putting ads up now. However it's giving me message that unless I change something my account will be deleted. Here's a screen shot of what it's saying. I don't even know what traffic exchange means. Well it would be bad business for me to contact advertisers for my benefit that are involved with the company that I work for.
You could write an ebook about your funny experiences in broadcasting and sell it on your site. Just a thought.
Easiest way is with banners and selling them around forums. If you don't have any luck ask anyone here with some reputation and you will get a chance to make a deal fast.
Definitely run your own banners, but is there a way you can monetize the forum? You must have a list of members there, so possibly look at doing a monthly email out with information on products/services that your members would truly be interested in. I fully understand your point that you are a radio show host and not a business man, so look at ways to make money which capitalize on your strengths. You know your audience, you know what they like and don't like. Are there businesses out there that provide products/services your listeners/readers would enjoy using?
If I were you I would create a membership to a private section on your forum, even if you charge a modest $9.95 Per month for that, and had 100 people thats $1k per month, as for content for that, I'm sure you could come up with something.