Hi, I have a Sports Forum which covers a broad range of the UK's most popular sports, but the vast majority of users are discussing football (soccer). The forum runs on vbulletin and is quite similar in layout to digitalpoint. Currently I am getting about 12-14k absolutely unique visitors per day with about 250k page impressions per day (about 7m-8m page impressions per month) and I have not yet monetized with any ads. Over 90% of all traffic is coming from the UK, with Ireland, Europe and USA covering most of the remaining 10%. I have read that forums are notorious for low CPM rates because the users become ad-blind. This may be the case for me but luckily the users are also producing enough keywords to see quite a bit of randomly picked up traffic from Google. About 25% of all visitors are registered as 'new' or first time visitors by Google. So with all the different options out there what would people suggest is the best way to monetise all this traffic? And if possible could someone suggest a rough figure for the CPM I'd expect to achieve with 250k impressions on a forum with Google Adsense (just as an example as I have no idea what the potential for this is as I haven't monetized at all yet.) Thanks a lot for your help
Apart from Adsense and other CPM networks, I'd probably suggest the following methods to monetise. 1.) Betting Ads ( if you can have a private partnership with the likes of Betfair and Willhill, or just do a standard affiliate banner) 2.) Premium Membership 3.) Video Advertising ( Goviral for example that operate on a PPV basis.)
When I had a high traffic sports forum I was making the most with direct banner ads + private advertising.
Yes. Betting ads very profitable. But if your main visitors from US this type have not good perspective at this time.
banner ads or mabey a vip secion charge like 10 per year on it suprised how it adds up. Nice job on the forum.
Thanks lads, I imagine I have to choose between ads and a VIP section since it would be a bit cheeky to ask for both to generate revenue.