Can you earn money with a forum?

[Beverly]

When i started my forum, i didn't have intentions of earning money. But after about three months, I put up ads that can be seen by guests only. The ads are strategically placed beneath the thread starter and at the footer of the page. I have considered placing more ads on the page, to the maximum allowed but have not ventured into that. So far, I'm not earning a good deal of money with Adsense on the forums as most clicks are coming from my blogs/articles. Just wondering if there is a secret to earning Adsense money on a forum.

 

[Leon.]

I don't use my forum to earn money. It's on a free forum host (although it's probably one of the better if not the best out there), and I don't see any point in having paid or "premium" advertisements. You're there to forum and for the community, not to make money. At least... That's how it should ideally be

 

[Ricus]

There are quite a bit of methods of earning money with a forum, such as adding advertisement banners, locking the content with surveys, selling premium content or even adding "adf.ly" to all of the outgoing links. Since advertisement banners bring a lot of profits and are not that annoying, administrators are still preferring these along with selling premium content!

 

[ashkan]

I felt the same way when I made my first website. It was never actually supposed to be for money. It was for a chance for people to help each other out and to learn something new.

I never expected the site to get so popular so I put a couple ads up and I started to earn a lot of money.

So the answer is yes you can, but it should never be the reason to make the forum.

 

[Dean!]

I make a nice and tidy amount of money using my other forums, money is actually a great motivation to improve and make the site the best it can be. Making money from the site can also pay for things like custom themes. addons, SEO work and nice contests.

Unless your mega-rich and can afford anything you want, at some point, most people WILL monetize their forum.

 

[lowrider.STi]

Of course you can. There is an automotive forum in my country, the biggest, which earns tons, especially from ads.

 

[SeanFace101]

I would say the best ways to earn some extra cash from your forum would be to sell adspace, put ads on it from google adsense or a similar service an/or offer a VIP membership for a monthly fee.

 

[isuit21]

In order to earn more revenue with Google Adsense, I highly recommend putting the advertisement banners inside of the posts. Since I have done so, my statistics showed me a 500% higher income, than usual.

 

[NeoGills]

I do, I create my forum as hobby now i used it to earn for extra income

 

[edwardkingston]

Yes, but it's really hard to earn from adsense account! the effort is more, and result is poor

 

[SonnyNET64]

Of course you can!
It's actually very easy. You set up your forum, you drive traffic through and when you get adequate members, then you apply adsense to your site. My friend gets a couple hundred of clicks a day, and earns $1 a click. That is crazy.

SonnyNET64

 

[jpvonline]

Without ads on a forum, it's almost impossible to make money. Premium content is not worth purchasing if your a new forum, because there would be no premium content for the member to view!
Start off with just a footer and header banner and if your lucky you'll get a few clicks.
Some scripts support ads and make it easier to integrate, others you'll need to code yourself which usually isn't that hard, it's just a matter of applying some basic HTML/CSS.

Some good ad networks are adchoices and adhitz. AdChoices are basically adsense from google, while adhitz is a smaller company that pays via PayPal which may be a benefit for you.

For every click you receive, you'll receive a certain amount of money. Building up your forum and getting active activity is though, your focus.

Once you have a dedicated forum, and you have a couple of thousand members introduce memberships, which can be purchased. These can be purchased and then applied to the user to see premium content the average member cannot see.
Before you know it you'll have members renewing and buying memberships by the day!

Good luck!

 

[BigBigFan]

That is crazy, Sonny, most clicks are penny clicks up to quarter clicks, $1 is a great EPC.

JPV, do you think it's harder to get search traffic to a forum or to a blog? Your ideas would work even better if you didn't have a forum

 

[jpvonline]

That is crazy, Sonny, most clicks are penny clicks up to quarter clicks, $1 is a great EPC.

JPV, do you think it's harder to get search traffic to a forum or to a blog? Your ideas would work even better if you didn't have a forum

Forums get a load of reciprocal links due to the posts made (of course if everything is tightly moderated and kept on topic) which makes it much easier to rank and get search traffic.
Though blogs are much easier to market, as you can't actually market a forum and get backlinks on another forum, right? You wouldn't get as near as much opportunity.

So really its a win/win if you choose both. But a well built forum would do better than a well built blog for the following reasons:
1. As said before, it gets many more reciprocal links and link backs due to the posts made
2. A forum keeps members posting and online. Which means the bounce rate decreases and the Alexa ranking goes up. Might not increase search traffic but will definitely increase just the general traffic rank.
3. Much more interaction, which is basically a summary of what I wrote in reason no. 2.

If you know a bit of SEO, A blog might be better for you, but in general forums are a great way to earn some affiliate income and get a lot of organic traffic.

Hope I helped!

 

[vida_llevares]

I know that a forum can be money-generating but it's also used by some as a traffic generator. Instead of earning money directly through ads, a forum can also have an indirect income through clicks to the main website.

 

[rage35]

There are some ways to make money other than Adsense. There are websites that will pay you to put advertisement banners to your forums but these depends on the niche of the forum you have. If your forum talks about money making, then there's a lot of sites that will pay you to advertise their banners on your forum, if and only if you already have high traffic. You must first build traffic to your forum and then later on you can do these stuff to make you money.

 

[thebrad]

forums can make tons of money if they get lots of traffic but without traffic a forum is nothing.. ads are the best source of income for blogs/forums.

 

[vash]

Forum is just like any other web sites, if you can get a lot of targeted traffic, then you certainly can bring revenue in from it.

When you just get started, you really should focus on getting good content and active members. The revenue will eventually come after you have decent traffic. On the internet, traffic (targeted traffic) is the key is your most valuable assets... on the other hand, in order to achieve decent traffic volume you must have decent content.

Don't just start a forum and hope it will earn you money from the beginning. It takes hard work.
It is in fact harder these days to have a successful forum if you just get started, since every niche we can think of already have well established forums and new forums don't really stand a chance against them in short term.

 

[bugara1]

I haven't put any ads on my forum and i don't intend to until the traffic is good enough.

 

[wasi90lk]

Just focus on getting as much traffic as possible.

The secret to good Adsense income is traffic. The more traffic you have, the more you can earn.