I have a forum running pretty well, only problem is the Ads are totally of target. Despite that how else can I make money aside from adsense? . Thanks.
There's two main things you can sell with a forum: space and membership. Unless your forum is well developed, relatively aged and has a very strong user base, I wouldn't suggest charging for membership. Definitely give it at least a few years. As for selling space, well, I guess you have a few options. AdSense tends to not work well in forums, but regular ads might, especially if you have some PageRank to go along with it, you can charge more for ads. If anyone else has other ideas I would absolutely love to hear them!!
check DTM network, they sell a lot of space and i think they reach $1,000 per a month from the ads, do you think it's a lot? i think with adsense u would never reach that amount of cash not to mention forum users never click on adsense ads... only fools will pay for buying ad space on a forum... people use forum for knowledge etc and not for reading your ads.... i never actually clicked on ads on a forum, i'm interested to hear other opinions as well. your forum http://melbshuffle.com/ doesn't have members... only when u reach about 1,000 users you can some people buyign ads
You may want to listen to Lee Dodd on his advice for forum monetization http://www.kchut.com/2007/07/listen-to-lee-dodd-on-how-he-runs-profitable-forums/
You can also try selling "Media Packs" for your forums. For example, if your forum receives a lot of traffic, you might want to try selling forum stickies. The forum at ClanTemplates.com does this type of thing for $20/mo per sticky. Take a look at this: http://www.clantemplates.com/mediakit/
He might mean space to place ads. I suggest sell ads spaces, Sell Folders, means if someone wants his folder on your forum, create it and ask for a price per month, per week or whatever. you can sell sticky posts as well.
You can make use of the section targeting in Adsense that most people are not aware of - when posting content related to your main topic, enclose them with these tags: <!-- google_ad_section_start --> your targeted content here <!-- google_ad_section_end --> This should improve the targeting significantly. To answer your question though, you could also give Kontera a try. Apart from that, its just what many others have suggested - selling links (header/footer) and adding your affiliate links.
Sell your forum! j/k. joining affiliate products might be good too. but no matter which way, how much will you get will really depend on your traffic and your visitor (that they like to click ads or not). all i can say is good luck for building your forum.
I have a forum that I just started and I have traffic coming from my main site but I have used CJ to put in affiliated banners on top and bottom as well as coded so adsense banner will appear after each 1st post. Have not received many adsense clicks but affiliate sales have been better then expected. I have the Famoso Magazine link in my sig if you want to check out how i did it or have any questions just PM me
try some other companies besides adsense. Try Clicksor.com ads, try selling text/banner ad spots (or footer links). Try using affiliate banners like azoogle and maxbounty. There are a number of different things you can do to change up your advertising a bit
sell adspace on your forum , put affiliate links , exchange links , and surely you get good response.