A few months back, I started work on a site to connect forums by virtue of their forums signatures. Monetising forum signatures has a lot of potential, but has yet to be really taken on, due to the fears of spam and degredation of posting by users. I'm looking initially for a maximum of 5 vBulletin forum owners to trial my new concept. The problems outlined above are the obstacles I had in mind when creating the PPC network for forum signatures. Instead of a normal PPC programs where links can put be anywhere, I'm looking to create a closed network of pre-approved forums, and only allow click earnings through those forums. I've created a central tracking service and account area, as well as a vBulletin plugin which does a number of things: it allows forum owners to earn commission on every click from their forum it prevents spam using a number of techniques, such as the removal of signatures on posts that don't meet preset guidelines (such as posts per day, min post count etc) it allows forum owners to fully control signatures, to stop abuse by users As I mentioned earlier, I'm looking for 3 - 5 owners of small / medium sized vBulletin forums to trial the system. I'll show you the development site (it's fully functional), give exact details of how the system works so that you can gauge the potential for yourself, and give you a chance to try it out and give feedback for improvements. The whole idea is to patch up the major problems with other PPC networks, whilst targetting it at a largely untapped area. I do not like spam, I do not like half-hearted efforts, and my aim is to create an innovative solution to keep advertisers, publishers, and forum owners happy. More information on my blog, or you can PM me here if you are interested.
Nice idea, does it require any hacking of vBulletin? If so, how much? I was thinking about this very type of concept before.
No hacking of the core files required. The prototype consists of a single file that needs adding to the root directory of the forum, and a plugin file, which will give the forum owner access to all the spam control options. This does mean that the minimum version that will work right now is 3.50.
Someone recently asked me why this is limited to vBulletin only: there are plans to cover all major forum software as things progress vBulletin was chosen because it's what I know, so it made sense to start with it As far as compatibility goes, all the tracking stuff is generic, only the spam management / prevention options would require changing to work with other scripts. If you are interested in helping to port over the plugin to other scripts (such as phpBB or SMF), give me a shout, and I'll send you a copy of the plugin to look over. I do have some experience with other forum types, but not enough to port them over just like that, without creating test installations etc.