[ARTICLE] 10 ways to Make Money with your forum - without adsense or cpa offers

[Business Coach]

One thing that has kept me from hosting/selling ads directly on my site is a grave concern regarding negative threads about a paying advertiser.

I don't overly moderate my forums and allow people the freedom to post threads regarding poor quality service and kit, but I don't imagine a paying advertiser would be too happy at seeing such threads on a site they are financially supporting.

How do you deal with this situation on your own boards?

Cheers,
Shaun

I won't name names, but there is a major industry forum and several companies that are just horrible in every possible way. The amount of complaints are astronomical for a couple in particular. Yet these companies faithfully buy major ad slots. In addition, they get new customers regularly and good reviews as well.

In the end, if you are selling advertisements, believe it or not, the connection between the bad posts and the ads will not be noticed on a larger board as much as it will on a smaller board. Too much going on.

 

[Tomble]

I won't name names, but there is a major industry forum and several companies that are just horrible in every possible way. The amount of complaints are astronomical for a couple in particular. Yet these companies faithfully buy major ad slots. In addition, they get new customers regularly and good reviews as well.

In the end, if you are selling advertisements, believe it or not, the connection between the bad posts and the ads will not be noticed on a larger board as much as it will on a smaller board. Too much going on.

That's a very good point. I imagine some organisations buy advertising on forums where they aren't perceived so well if they feel they have improved to try and get that message across in the hope people will look into it and hopefully change their perception of them. Having said that I doubt advertisers will stick around for long if there is a constant and overbearing dislike of them on that forum.

 

[craigiri]

It just so happen, in my case, that all the advertisers are smart enough in the first place to know about the potential of social media (forums)......so they not only don't sell lousy products, but are not too concerned about a negative review here or there - because problems usually get addressed by other users anyway (advice).
The worse thing you can do is to tie together sponsors and content in any way, i.e. - advertise with me and I will make certain your products do not get negative reviews, etc.
That is what a lot of print pubs do - purposely or not - and it has been the death of them!

 

[CTXMedia]

Hmmm ... I might just have to dip my toe and give it a try. It would certainly be preferable to have the vast majority of the revenue in my hands, rather than a fraction of it ...

I'm tempted to go off on a tangent about rate calculation, but will start another thread to discuss that.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[Business Coach]

Hmmm ... I might just have to dip my toe and give it a try. It would certainly be preferable to have the vast majority of the revenue in my hands, rather than a fraction of it ...

and THAT is the exact kind of thinking this article was meant to inspire

 

[steven s]

We do a yearly calendar where members submit photos of their car and everyone votes on them. Top 12 go into the calendar.
We use cafepress. I suppose I could mark it up, but haven't. But that is another way to generate some income.

 

[Business Coach]

We do a yearly calendar where members submit photos of their car and everyone votes on them. Top 12 go into the calendar.
We use cafepress. I suppose I could mark it up, but haven't. But that is another way to generate some income.

many calendar sites charge an entry fee to be considered, then the members judge, then the calendars are sold to everyone

often the calendars have sponsor ads in them also

 

[Decent60]

On our site, we used to have a "Member of the Month", to which were selected from the "V.I.P" members (paid memberships). For being active and helpful on the site, they got that award (which stayed with them), to have Moderator powers without any real responsibilities (like mandatory checking of sections on the site) for the duration of the month, and 3 months added on to their "V.I.P" subscription. There were several conditions that they needed to have, one of them was being a "V.I.P" member for at least 3 months. We had a nice revenue coming in from just the content we supplied, but it got slightly bigger when we announced that contest. It was enough to pay for an upgrade in the server and keep the server costs to a bare minimal of out-of-pocket expenses, which was all we were shooting for.

 

[Business Coach]

AWESOME example Decent60

 

[grant sarver]

I've always wondered about subscriptions that give you your name in gold and "supporting member" title. Doubt that it brings in much. One added value I've considered is email addresses. You could sell subscriptions to (say) Brogan if you could give him "Brogan@F1.com". The account can be set up to forward to their regular email account. So now he can say "just email me at Brogan@F1.com". Give a big discount the first year and if they really start using it, what are they going to say when renewal time comes around? I've had some success with it, but I'm a volunteer in a non-profit and we really don't need the money. We do own blacksmith.org which makes it attractive to our members.

 

[Business Coach]

I've always wondered about subscriptions that give you your name in gold and "supporting member" title. Doubt that it brings in much. One added value I've considered is email addresses. You could sell subscriptions to (say) Brogan if you could give him "Brogan@F1.com". The account can be set up to forward to their regular email account. So now he can say "just email me at Brogan@F1.com". Give a big discount the first year and if they really start using it, what are they going to say when renewal time comes around? I've had some success with it, but I'm a volunteer in a non-profit and we really don't need the money. We do own blacksmith.org which makes it attractive to our members.

excellent

as well as the primary directory

www.yourforum.com/username

for those who have forums where profiles are important

 

[grant sarver]

Oh yeah, thanks for starting this thread Maurice!

 

[steven s]

I've always wondered about subscriptions that give you your name in gold and "supporting member" title.

I use a site supporter as a rank image.
I think people like seeing that knowing they are contributing financially to the upkeep of the forum.
I wouldn't want to be involved with email addresses unless it was an automatic mod using cPanel. I have enough things to.

 

[Business Coach]

there are "hotmail" clone scripts - complete with restrictions to stop spammers

 

[dutchbb]

11. Online personal training
12. Affiliates
13. Sell information
14. Allow donations and make them fun (offer something in return -> more status / options on the forum)

 

[Josh Arcadia]

sell the forum
That's right sell the actual forum itself...for 24 hours! If your forum is even semi popular, offer it at auction or fixed price with the buyer earning the ability to "own" the forum for a day. The winner gets their picture in the header, the name of the forum is changed and they get a special forum all to themselves to moderate as they wish. You might be surprised at how many members (and companies wanting to pitch to them) will want to be "king for a day".

I think this doesn't work...

 

[DoctorWatsOn]

1. Direct Ads.
   Sell the ads YOURSELF...and don't limit yourself to banners. You can theme your forum, have sponsors for specific sections, add special menus...the sky is the limit

This is the method that I plan to be using this year, I did start last year, but decided to ‘hold-off’ until I could move the site over from vB4, which should be finished in the next couple of weeks.

Firstly, my background is in local advertising sales – I started of at ABC Radio, one of Ireland’s super-pirates, in the early 80s and upon return to the UK I mainly worked in local newspapers & magazines. I even set-up a monthly [free pick-up] what’s on magazine with a 25,000 print-run that I [regrettably] sold to the local division of one of the largest UK national newspapers.

Secondly, the ‘Doctor WatsOn – your leisure time prescription’ website is modelled on that what’s on magazine, but without the £2.5k print bill each month and the logistics of hiring two vans & drivers every month to deliver to the 200 outlets!

The site is small, because it’s local, but it achieved almost 50k unique visitors last year, that keep coming back, when focused on a town with a population of only 100k people – not bad for year two of a ‘slow burn’. Although about 50% of the traffic is from beyond the town, being a seaside town we get lots of day-trippers and holidaymakers, helped by the likes of the Worthing International Birdman Competition.

The site is now expanding to cover the whole county, with the idea to move into neighbouring counties in the future.

All what’s on listings are totally free, as that’s what drives the traffic, however I am adding commercial sections to the site, the first being ‘Eating-out’, where local restaurants/hotels/pubs & cafes can have a page for an introductory rate of just £150 per year.

It’s an easy sell when you pitch it at ‘less than £3 per week - to reach thousands of potential new customers – you can’t even get a lineage ad in the local paper for that!'

The maths are not difficult, if I sell just 2 pages a day/10 per week – the site will be generating over £75k per year. The potential is limitless.

So, there’s an idea for anyone running or thinking of setting-up a local site!

 

[DoctorWatsOn]

One thing that has kept me from hosting/selling ads directly on my site is a grave concern regarding negative threads about a paying advertiser.

I don't overly moderate my forums and allow people the freedom to post threads regarding poor quality service and kit, but I don't imagine a paying advertiser would be too happy at seeing such threads on a site they are financially supporting.

How do you deal with this situation on your own boards?

Cheers,
Shaun

TBH Shaun, I wouldn’t worry about this too much.

It’s one reason I’ll be selling ‘static pages’ in the front-end of the site, whilst allowing honest discussion to continue in the forums.

OK, there can be problems – I’ve experienced that working on local papers when the editorial team have run negative articles about my advertising clients, it was rare, but s*it happens.

Yes, it was a little bit difficult, nee uncomfortable, to deal with and yes very occasionally I lost a client, but that’s life, you move on and replace them with a new client.

One example was with a bed store, found guilty of selling beds that didn’t meet the fire regulations, splashed on the front page with the main story featured around pages 9-12. They went ‘ape-sh*t’ and pulled their £500 a week ad.

All I could do was explain the principle of ‘editorial independence’ and that advertisers could in no way interfere with that otherwise there would be no readers, no paper and therefore nowhere to advertise. That and, in a roundabout way, point out if they had bothered to have checked on what cheap imports they were buying the whole situation would never occurred anyway, i.e. it was their fault not ours.

They calmed down and were back onboard 4 weeks later.

EDIT: I do seem to remember having to give them a free 1/2 page ad to get them back onboard, but that was a small price to win back a £26k per year client.

 

[Business Coach]

I think this doesn't work...

why not

Doctor watson Thats Great stuff!

 

[Dav]

Some great stuff guys thanks for the ideas