Allow user advertising on a forum?

[Fufu]

• Would you allow advertising on a forum from a user and/or static ads?
• To what degree would you allow advertising from users your forums?
• Has the restrictions on advertising been successful on users?
• What would be a good policies about user advertising, if any?

Please provide details for your reasonings.

 

[x4rl]

No ad's ever on my forum.... reason there fugly as hell and am not in it for the money its my hobby :3

 

[a legacy reborn]

I will put ADs on when it is absolutely necessary, not for personal gain but if I had a big site to maintain the server(s)

If and when I put ads on I will make them limited and un-obstructive like facebook does, and I would allow an upgrade say $5/mo for no ads.

 

[mrGTB]

There are too many forum if you ask me only there because of ads. It's the only reason they run them in the first place. Your not going to get members joining a new forum that has no reason to show ads as an empty site, yet it does from the start.

 

[dieketzer]

the only ads i would ever consider would be member ads that were relevant to the community.

 

[CTXMedia]

I took a different approach with CycleChat and setup an Advertisers forum - so that traders put their ads on the site in a way that the membership is used to accessing, and it also shows up in What's New.

I hate banner ads splattered all over the place, but do need to generate revenue, so this seemed like a good compromise.

It's only one forum so doesn't overload the site/layout, and advertisers can only post one advert per day (and can't post on other people's ads) - and the subscription for the account upgrade is only a few £'s per month - so it's cheap and accessible and they get to speak to a captive and specific market audience.

Cheers,
Shaun