How are you monetizing your forum?

[salvaje]

Hi everyone

I wanted to open this thread to learn directly from the community.

If you have (or have had) a forum — big or small — I’d love to know how you’re monetizing it or how you’ve monetized it in the past. Not theory, but real experiences.

For example:

• Memberships or premium areas
• Advertising (AdSense, sponsorships, direct deals…)
• Affiliate marketing
• Selling products, services, or training
• Donations or support-based subscriptions
• Models you tried that didn’t work

I’m especially interested in:

• What has worked best for you
• What you would change if you were starting today
• At what point you think a forum becomes truly monetizable

The idea is to share creator experiences and extract practical learnings that can help all of us.

Thanks in advance to anyone who joins the discussion
I’m sure this will turn into a very interesting thread.

 

[Sim]

What works best will very much depend on your niche.

My property investing based site generates six-figure revenue from advertising (both direct and programmatic) and from "business" memberships.

My zoo community generates only about 10% of that amount from programmatic advertising and premium membership upgrades.

My property site has a vastly different demographic to my zoo community. What works for one site won't necessarily work for another.