Forum Money: How to make money online with your forums

This is very useful to all forum admins. Many don't know or can't monetize their forums, so this should help them find new ways to earn money from their communities.

Very good article Dojo. I use some of these methods myself and they do work. Albeit it also depends on how many members you may have and how much traffic your forum gets. So each method may vary from site to site but they are still all methods every forum admin looking to make some revenue from their forum should look into.

I am curious about affiliate marketing. From the number of spammy affiliate programs I have seen, I would be very hesitant to use such techniques on forum members as I would worry that they would be turned off when something went awry. So far, I have not had much luck with monetization but I would like to do more than cover my expenses at some point. I think it is key to understand what services you could offer that people would be willing to pay for.

Thanks for this article it is very useful. Also, if you are having trouble selling advertisements for your forum, start by placing adsense, and offer businesses free ad space for a couple months, and if they receive positive results it can encourage them to buy ads off your forum.

I've often wondered how forum owners make money and your article has certainly given some very good ways forum owners can monetize their forums. And I also feel that tronik has given a good suggestion in his post in that a forum owner can give businesses a free trial and if these businesses find that there's a return on their investment, they would certainly pay to advertise further.

But of course, too much ads would turn off members too. I've read in another forum that it was suggested that ads are not displayed for members but are visible for unregistered visitors. This way members who are contributing content to the forum won't be turned off from visiting and posting on the forum.

If you ask me, advertising is the best source of income on a forum nowadays. Especially if your forum has a big PR and it's well known, people will trust the forum and click on a link you promote.

This is useful information to keep in mind. My forum building days are just beginning, so it is good to know what options I have for monetization. This is very exciting for me, as I have been struggling to get traffic to my site, let alone participation in my forum. I have also downloaded the Forum Start PDF so I can do it right. Thank you for providing beginners like me with such valuable information.

I'm glad you mentioned selling your own ads, I'll always be a fan of that over google adsense, amazon ads, or any other third party ad service. Like you said, with your own ads YOU have control over it all and you don't have to deal with anyone else's terms or pay anyone else.

I have incorporated ad space on my site. I am anticipating some ad space to be sold by month end, which will hopefully increase readership and monetization. It is a step in the right direction; one I hadn't even considered until I read this post. Thank you!