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.

 

[Alvin63]

I'm not really. I do have affiliate links - it makes a little bit. Mainly it relies on annual donations. I tried ads once to cover costs and didn't like it - and it made a lot less than affiliate links. But maybe I didn't have enough ads.

 

[woody]

My forum currently averages 45,000 daily users. It has been around over 20 years. Success requires longevity and growth, I feel for anyone starting fresh today.

Affiliate, supporting memberships, direct advertising, and network advertising are all in play. (Network ads have tanked in recent months, regardless of topic/market.) I was an early adopter of what is now Google Ad Exchange and have worked within PreBid as well. I've since learned there are corporations full of techie's who are WAY smarter than me.

Ensure your site draws participation beyond what a simple AI Q/A already provides.