To Those Who Make Money With Their Forums - What's the Tipping Point?

[CTXMedia]

I hadn't even thought of doing affiliate marketing for dating sites! What a 'duh' moment. Maybe because I'm not fond of them... I'm not a dating forum as much as a site for spiritual love ...

I expect most people attracted to such ads are primarily looking for love/partnership rather than sex ... which, from your perspective and the "tone" of your site, should lead to a good click-through rate.

Personally I'm looking to move from my salaried day job to being full-time self employed running forums (and a web directory I've owned since 1998!) over the next 12-24 months. I've spent all of my free time this past week looking at how best to approach the transition; speaking to my accountant, ensuring I protect my family's home and savings, etc. and being completely honest about how much money I need to turn over each month to cover expenses and match my current salary. I can't do it yet. I don't make enough. That is the challenge for the next 12-24 months.

What I can (and am doing) for the moment, is creating the company as a non-trading entity (a low-cost way of securing the trading name I want to use later on) and building the brand and adding it onto my existing sites and focusing on what my key aims will be, the main income streams, and how I am going to achieve an increase in revenue to make up for the current shortfall.

Should be fun ...

The thing you have to remember with a website - forum, blog, web directory, whatever it is ... is that unless you are selling something directly, then your "product" is advertising space and an audience for those ads.

With that in mind, keep focused on buidling your forums membership - ensuring you include LOTS AND LOTS of key words in the posts you make on your site (to capitalise on Google's indexing of your content) - and then find complimentary affiliate programs or advertisers (possibly via Google Adsense).

Good luck ...

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[steven s]

Thanks everyone for your great feedback!

So what if my goal is to stay ad-free? Why would I want to get a buck just so my visitor can leave my site and go elsewhere? It doesn't make much sense...

No one making $$ from memberships or their own products?

I can probably run my site solely on site supporters, but it would be tight.
It's no crime having ads as long as it's not overdone.
Ads supplement my hobby income.
For years I was paying out of pocket.

I've been offered to sell it twice now, so I'd say it's still a labor of love for me.

 

[Sadik B]

I wrote a thread about this some time ago... How to make money with a website

 

[Divinum Fiat]

Thanks for the article, Sadikb. Interesting read.

I got the link part down. Came up with a brilliant idea about 10 weeks ago, put it in place and the site has now over 17,000 permanent, organic links already (and it's only 12 weeks old). So this part is set and viral now.

The Google adwords thing scares me a bit because it's foreign, but most importantly, no clue how to put one ad per page only. This forum has been great in every aspect, can't thank the XF team enough for starting it in the first place, what a gem! So I'm sure I'll find the steps to get started.

Wish me luck...

 

[Sadik B]

Thanks for the article, Sadikb. Interesting read.

I got the link part down. Came up with a brilliant idea about 10 weeks ago, put it in place and the site has now over 17,000 permanent, organic links already (and it's only 12 weeks old). So this part is set and viral now.

The Google adwords thing scares me a bit because it's foreign, but most importantly, no clue how to put one ad per page only. This forum has been great in every aspect, can't thank the XF team enough for starting it in the first place, what a gem! So I'm sure I'll find the steps to get started.

Wish me luck...

You are welcome.

The adwords thing is not to be done in the initial stages. The idea, with what I suggest in that post, is that once you have all the foundations in place and are looking to attract members, it's worth spending some money. Adwords is very very good because you can setup highly targeted and specific ads to a specific audience. If you see my General Forums, I acquired some excellent members who were searching for that kind of place through Adwords marketing.

 

[avi]

Now I just looked at your site and you only had 13 people online (all guests). That's not a lot of traffic to generate a good adsense income.

So what's the minimum no. ?

Thank u