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 bring
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