Looking For Forum Monetisation Tips

February 28th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

My forum is generating a decent amount of traffic now. It’s averaging around 2k impressions per day which is probably about the size of most small blogs. Around 80 users have registered although a lot of voyeurs pass through everyday.

My question is, how can I monetise some of this forum traffic? In the forum’s early days I had Google Adsense banners running but I removed these once I learnt about Adsense Smart Pricing and the resulting improvement in the CPM on my other sites has more than offset the loss of revenue from the forum. The problem I have now though is that the forum isn’t generating any income at all.

I’ve tried Adbrite ads but they are proving to be useless as well as lame (lots of loans and stupid games). I’ve applied for Tribal Fusion but I haven’t had any replies yet. Can anyone provide some pointers as to what to try next?

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About the Author

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Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University, and currently runs the Portal and online operations for one of the largest ISPs in the UK. He also writes for Windows 7 News.

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There Are 5 Responses So Far. »

  1. #1

    Comment by Dan and Jennifer on 28 February 2007:

    Hey Everton,

    Hmmm… something like Chitika (shopper.com) wouldn’t work well since you’re not product focused…

    You COULD maybe use YPN ads. Since you’re not doing google ads on those pages, Yahoo won’t care that you also use Google. However - I remember something about YPN only wanting U.S. traffic though, or does U.K. count? Anyway, depends on your traffic mixture, but text ads to convert well. Then there are some others like AdBrite, but I don’t believe they content match.

    And, if you have enough traffic across your site as a whole, how about in-content text advertising, i.e. IntelliTXT and/or Kontera.

    And then there are good old fashioned text link ads that you add yourself for affiliate programs that are of value to your readers… and rotate/test with OpenAds.

    And of course banners, but I don’t think those work well anymore at all.

    Have an awesome day!
    Dan

  2. #2

    Comment by Everton on 28 February 2007:

    YPN is a good suggestion. It’s still only open to people with a US Social Security number which I think is really weird, so I’ll have to try and dig out my number. I think it’ll still be valid even thouhgh I haven’t worked in the US for 10 years…..

    I’ve recently added Intellitxt to my blog and the contract says connectedinternet.co.uk as the domain so I think I can add it to the forum as well, so I think that’s a goer as well.

  3. #3

    Comment by Ajay on 2 March 2007:

    Why not put IntelliTXT on the forum?

    I don’t think adsense or similar ads will work, because no one will bother to click.

  4. #4

    Comment by Everton on 2 March 2007:

    I added intellitxt yesterday following your the suggestion above.

    I called TribalFusion last night and my account had been approved they just hadn’t communicated the fact back to me. Hopefully I’ll be able to run some cpm ads in the forum soon, which will negate the low CTR issue.

  5. #5

    Comment by Ajay on 2 March 2007:

    Thats great… I applied to TF as well, but I don’t think I will get approved… well needa grow first :(

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