Hello, I am considering starting up a forum, and I'm simply not sure how to make any money from it at all. So I have come here in search of advice/ideas/tips on how to make money with a Forum? Thanks, Robbie Plenderleith
participate in a particular forum according to your interest and then try to give solutions of problems. Once your profile establish strongly then you have to opportunity to earn money.
Ads of course. its what almost all forums do. they earn thru ads. whether its google adsense or anything.
It's hard to make money without it being popular. Take this place for example, you can buy premium and things like that. On my forums I currently only monetize via ads. It's not the greatest income, but anyway.
I'd scrap the idea forums are renowned for being tough to monetize (unless you are like the only forum in your niche and its commercial in nature, which is a rarity).
Thank you all for your feedback, i'm thinking of starting out as a forum and then in future perhaps 'upgrade' my website so it is not just a forum. How much money would ads bring in each month, for say, 500 unique visitors a month?
I would actually suggest going the other way around. Build up your main site and then introduce the forum. By building the site first, you can get a subscriber base and pretty much guaranteed members whenever you finally do introduce the forum. As per monetizing it: Adsense/other ads Premium section Giving users the ability to buy/rent a board per month.
If you have a lot of traffic -> ads, if you don't -> affiliate programs related to your forum content.
A vip subforum area.Make your forum a thing which sets it apart from all the forums out there.Learn how DP and WF did.Regards
To be honest, if you are worried about making money when your forum is small (or non-existent), you shouldn't have a forum. That being said, with 500 visitors/month you can probably make somewhere around $0.25/month.