One of the most popular types of websites today are internet forums. People join forums for many reasons. They become members to learn new things by asking other members for advice or help other members by answering their questions. Forums are also great place to connect with other professionals and potential customers.
Because many people are visiting forums regularly they have potential to make good amount of money for their owners. Forums just like blogs can be profitable and make some extra money for their owners. If you are a forum owner and want to know how to make money with forums here are some tips:
1. Offer value to your visitors
People will visit your forum to learn new things that will be of value to them as well connect with other people. If they don’t like what they find on your forum or you don’t post relevant and up to date information frequently they will stop visiting your forum and join other forums where they can find fresh and useful information. If you want your forum to remain relevant you must post regularly. Providing useful information to your members and visitors will also help you build the good reputation of your forum and contribute to increasing the page rankings and the number of visitors, which In turn will result in earning more money.
1. Promote your forum
To make money with a forum just like with any other website, the most important thing is traffic. To drive traffic you need an active forum and to accomplish this you need active members which will post questions for other members to answer as well as well as answer question posted by other members. To grow the number of members you must promote your forum so people that might be interested in the topic can become aware of your forum and the topics that are being discussed. To promote your forum you can offer to write content for other forums, blogs and websites. Another important part for promoting your forum is to apply proper search engine optimization of your site by building backlinks on relevant websites with high page rank. Another good way to promote your forum is to have it listed in various directories like DMOZ. You can search online for directories that are specific to the topics of your forum and have it listed there.
3. Monetize your forum with pay per click advertisements
The most common and easiest method to monetize a forum is with pay per click advertising networks like Google Adsense. Using Adsense as a method to make money online with a forum or any type of websit is very easy, all you have to do is paste a code and ads will appear every time a someone visits your forum. The ads are filtered to the interests and location of the visitor and when he clicks on an ad you will earn money. To start making money with Adsense first of all you need to apply for an account. If your account is approved you can log in, generate code that will be customized to match the theme of your forum, and insert it in your forum. If your application for Adsense account is rejected you can try other PPC network.
4. Join CPM advertising networks
Another way to monetize a forum is using CPM networks. CPM networks just like Adsense are relatively easy way to make money with a forum because all you have to do is insert code in your forum and let the network worry about finding advertisers and advertisements. Unlike with Adsense which pays for every click on the ads, CPM network don pay per click but rather they pay based on the number of times ads have been displayed. They pay is usually a few dollars for every 1000 views.
5. Make money with affiliate programs
Another way to make money with a forum is by promoting affiliate products. Forums are good way to make money with affiliate programs because people that visit forum are interested in the topics discussed there. If you promote products that may help them solve their problems than for every purchase they make from the merchants website you will earn money which usually is a percentage of the price. If you can find product that is of high demand among the audience of your forum you can expect to make a nice amount of money, because of this you should experiment to find the most lucrative programs.
6. Sell advertisement space yourself
PPC and CPM networks a good and realtively easy way to make money with a forum. The downside of these methods is that you need to share the profit with the ad network. However you can sell the ad space yourself, exclude the middle man and keep all the money for your self. However it will require more work on your side because there will not be ad networks to take care about finding advertisers and filling the inventory. You can sell advertisement space for a certain period. For example you can sell a banner space for 30 days period for a fixed amount of money, regardless how much time banner is displayed or clicked on.
7. Offer premium membership for to make more money
Another way to monetize online forum aside from advertising and affiliate links is by offering a premium membership to your forum to interested people. Many forums are using this method to make money. First of all you need to establish the reputation of your forum. Once your forums reputation is established you can start selling premium membership for a small fee which will offer premium content. Some forums even turn into exclusive paid membership forums once their reputation is established.
These are legitimate ways to make money with a internet forum. There is not a best way to monetize internet forum because all forums are not equal. To find the most profitable monetization method for a certain forum the best way is to experiment and try all methods as well as their combination and stick to whatever brings most earnings.
