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

[Salty]

I actively sell ice cream to all members who visit any site I'm involved with.

This in turn has generated 10 zillion page views a day.


I'll help spread your word to all community leaders.

 

[HannahP]

why not

I was going to say:

'Because it's a dumb idea' would be my guess. But what do I know.​

​

but I changed my mind.

And I don't have time to keep up with this thread, so don't respond.

Oh, one last thing, I had a Chipotle chicken burrito and a Samuel Adams Noble Pils for lunch. Can someone please monetize that for me? Thanks in advance.

 

[Business Coach]

welcome trolls!

feel free to continue to contribute NOTHING to this thread!

 

[Salty]

welcome trolls!

feel free to continue to contribute NOTHING to this thread!

You tell em

 

[Junior]

The 9th idea is so awesome, king for the day heh. Sounded bad till I read that. Who wouldn't want to be "king"?

 

[Business Coach]

The 9th idea is so awesome, king for the day heh. Sounded bad till I read that. Who wouldn't want to be "king"?

you said it!

there are many variations of this, and of course theme it for the community "top dog, top rider, Queen of Hearts, etc"

its about fun and bragging rights for them, great way for the owner to cover expenses

 

[TNCclubman]

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 delete it. Then message the person and tell them. "I had to delete your post as its negative about an advertiser that is helping pay our bills. I hope you understand"

Happens alot and 100% people understand and respond that its fine.

I was called out on it once by a trouble maker that saw the original thread and this is how I handled it.

I responded that we dont allow anonymous bashing and that if the person would use their real name as their username, and their real pic as their avatar, we would allow the post to remain. We made it a site policy and the bashing of our advertisers went away. I explained that I didnt want to deal with lawyers and people asking posts to be removed, so if the bashers used their real info they'd accept all responsibility for their content.

 

[CTXMedia]

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

 

[TNCclubman]

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

I also added "For all I know you may be a competitor of his trying to make him look bad"

Everyone agreed with our policy after that.

 

[Business Coach]

I delete it. Then message the person and tell them. "I had to delete your post as its negative about an advertiser that is helping pay our bills. I hope you understand"

Happens alot and 100% people understand and respond that its fine.

I was called out on it once by a trouble maker that saw the original thread and this is how I handled it.

I responded that we dont allow anonymous bashing and that if the person would use their real name as their username, and their real pic as their avatar, we would allow the post to remain. We made it a site policy and the bashing of our advertisers went away. I explained that I didnt want to deal with lawyers and people asking posts to be removed, so if the bashers used their real info they'd accept all responsibility for their content.

awesome policy and excellent way to handle the situation

thanks for sharing that

 

[Mike Law]

Excellent article!

So please go ahead, I will contract to 30% on every $ you make for my forum.... I run a "legal" forum, not too busy but very specialized and high retention.

 

[Business Coach]

Thank you, glad you liked it.

Sure no problem, 30% is just fine. Contact me and we can discuss the fees for my time and expertise as well as your budget to handle expenses.

 

[Weppa333]

interesting thread.

Just a comment tough, it's quite obvious that (for a well known site) you make more money by doing direct sales rather than with adsense. However, ad sales force also costs money (I mean, my job is to have my forum online, not to be a salesman - I hate this, and I don't give a fsck if I lose money because of that).
Google takes 50% share (nobody knows for sure but that's my gut feeling) and that's about what any decent salesforce will cost you as well. At the end of the day, adsense is not so bad.

The other problem is that many ADVERTISERS have a mix-media approach ; they give money to you AND to adsense AND to facebook (etc) all at the same time, and they compare results. I don't know a single advertiser, in 2010, that does not look into the CPC of an ad campaign, even if it is sold CPM because, well, "you sell CPM".
Your "expensive CPM" ads actually have to click more than google, otherwise you're simply doing "junk sales" and nobody will come back ever again.

Again, you are in direct contact with the customer, you have a limited number of customers, you have to keep them happy. Keeping them happy means outperforming Adsense : good luck with that. Because you'll produce less clicks (that's a fact) so your site will look "small" in their mix media. And those clicks you got for them ; they'd better be cheap !

So this whole idea of "replacing adsense with something you do yourself" is not as simple as it seems. We don't live in "CPM wonderland" anymore. When I started selling ads, $30CPM was mainstream. It makes people laugh today.

A) You have to sell roughly at the same price as google or advertisers will simply laugh at you (especially as many forums DO KEEP their adsense adspaces even when selling direct CPM - your advertisers are not idiots and will notice that they can be on your site "for cheap" thru the adsense backdoor.)
B) The share adsense takes is not really much than what it would cost you to do the same job (either in time or by hiring a sales dude). Furthermore, google takes the customer problems, not you. This is invaluable to me.

I could comment on the 10 other bullet points but that would take an entire day

Just a quick word on "website rebranding" and stuff like that ; again, if the customer wants a visual impact, it's called branding. They want that people remember the name, the logo, etc. Only major accounts do care about branding nowadays - local stores or smaller customers don't give a d*mn : they want clicks, ROI, leads, CPA, whatever. They don't know the acronyms, but that's what they want
Or, again, you're doing junksales and move from one angry customer to another.

 

[erich37]

1. Premium Membership.
   Many forums are afraid of this, but the ones that have them pro$per. Keep the main functions free and come up with incentives that are valuable to your member base for a premium membership. Ideally multiple levels and a monthly fee (so people can quit when they want) will bring the most profit and be most well-received by members.

would be great to have an option in XenForo to make "Private Conversations" available to premium (paying) members only.

 

[steven s]

I delete it. Then message the person and tell them. "I had to delete your post as its negative about an advertiser that is helping pay our bills. I hope you understand"

Happens alot and 100% people understand and respond that its fine. <spin>

And that is why I don't accept paid advertisers. I'd rather make less money than defend an advertiser, whether it's just or not.
I've had advertisers and vendors sell products with the only rule that they contribute to the community. Selling product is not a contribution.
If the vendor is good, people will praise them. If they suck, people will let them have it. If others think the person posting is wrong, members will respond.
What works for one may not work for another.