Forums are great, profitable ventures. They support themselves and content is generated from the membership base. However not all forums are easy to monetize. Sure you can stick some banner ads up, or maybe even adsense. But that doesn’t guarantee you a good amount of revenue. Written below are several techniques that you may use to increase your revenue. Which will ultimately give you more profit.
Ok, here we go. Lets learn how to make more money with your forum:
– Memberships
I can understand why you might not consider a membership program. Some questions you might have are “How do I sell a membership”? Or maybe “ What should I offer”? These are a great questions and I”ll answer them. Selling a membership isn’t as hard as you might think. You can do it sever different ways.
1. Make a info product and sell a membership. Offer the info product for free as well as a private section on the forum. This can work for just about any niche.
2. Custom names, pictures, and even the ability to have a signature. Most forum software will allow you to control all of this. Many people want signatures so they can advertise their websites, services, or personal story. Why not sell it to them?
– Forum Newsletters
Does your niche/industry have a lot of news, products, and services. If you have a niche that makes a lot of news, why not start a newsletters. Let your readers know about all the threads/topics going on for the newest news. You can also sneak in a few paid links. Which can increase your forum revenue by more then 25% – 50%. Just find business, affiliate programs, or even affiliates that will purchase paid links (there are many).
– PM Blasts
One of the greatest features on a forum are private messages. They allow two or more members to communicate privately about anything. They also make great “mailboxes”. Everyone checks their private messages. You can utilize this as a revenue stream by selling paid links and ads. You could also find a few affiliate programs that pay you for leads. They will pay you for every lead you can generate. Some of these “lead” base affiliate programs pay up to 5$ per member!
– Self Serving Ad Platform
A lot of conversations happen on forums and keywords are all over the place. Why not create or purchase a plugin that will use these keywords and convert them into ads. There are a lot of forums that do this now and they make money! People purchase these types of “ads”. Why? Because they are effective!
– Sell Links
That’s right. Selling links every week, bi-week, or monthly can generate you some decent cash. Many, many people buy links on forums. Especially forums that have a large user base or pagerank (google). Check out webmaster forums and ad marketplaces to find link buyers.
Ok, now you have several new ways to milk your forum. Get to it! Remember to try to experiment with other ways of making money with your forum. You’ll be surprise where you can sell ads and links.
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Written by Atniz
Topics: Money