Can this forum with 300+ members be monetized?

by 21 replies
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I am helping someone to get there forum more traffic and also come up with a monetizing strategy . There isnt a lot of traffic, around 2500 visits for the last month and 1200 unique visitors. So obviously adsense isnt doing much.

The forum is about Case Modding, every month they run a contest where the members post there Case Build and the community decides the winner. The prize is $50 (there will be more contest put into place down the road)

The problem is as of right now there isnt hardly any income, except for the adsense which is almost nothing.


Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


Here is the forum
#main internet marketing discussion forum #forum #monetizing #niche
  • Not to jump off topic, but are there any good Contest Apps that would be helpful with integrating into the facebook fan page?
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    • What do you mean, 'not to'? You just did jump off topic!
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  • As far as I know offering incentives to post is not allowed by adsense isnt it? Really wqith this low traffic, try promoting it harder first, and also, try some very niche targeted offer, clickbank can help you.
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    • Not sure if this would fall into the adsense TOS violation or not. Never thought about that. Thanks I am going to look into that ASAP.

      I do realize the traffic isnt much. But I was really looking for other monetizing offers other than adsense. Ill check clickbank.

      Thanks again for the heads up on adsense last thing we would want is to get banned for breaking there TOS
  • You are welcome
  • How targeted is your forum?

    If it's a free-for-all "talk about whatever" forum it will be hard to monetize with just 300 members. However if it's something very targeted like a small pay-per-download community, it would be easy to post affiliate links to ppd websites/services.
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  • I would recommend affiliate products related to PCs & PC cases especially. Physical products from places like newegg, ebay, or amazon. That way its targeted to your users. You could also include gaming CPA offers, since those who like to custom build and mod their systems are generally gamers (at least casually) & internet lovers.
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  • You gotta become affiliated with places that sell anything you need for case mods. This way you can actually offer a place to buy specific items needed to mod your own case. Or you can go as far as having links to all the parts for each mod of the month.

    Basically, you want people that browse your forum to go and buy/look for parts through you instead of just Googling in the other window.

    Also I've noticed that to see the photos you need to register, and while I don't have experience in running forums this puts me off. If I was a potential customer, I would prefer to at least see what it's all about without the needed to register.
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    • Thank's, this actually gives me some good ideas. I wasnt aware of the photos not being available to non-registered members. Ill look into that and talk to the owner about it.

      Thanks everyone for your input - Much appreciated
  • I would not begin monetising it just yet. Let the numbers increase further and I would plan to keep the members engaged - let them spend more time on the forum. Build traffic to your forum and let it build reputation. Once you have good amount of time being spent on the forum by a good number of the members. Then is the time to sell ad slots on the site.
  • Banned
    I don't know what "case modding" means, so don't take too much notice of me!

    I have a suggestion, though: do something to enable first-time visitors to get rid of that very intrusive orange box which prevents people from seeing the home page properly. I couldn't work out how to close it or get rid of it, at all, and I'm no internet/website newbie. My guess is that it probably drives large numbers of visitors away. :p
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    • Yes he put it there initially to try to get more people to sign up.
  • For my own knowledge, what is "not much" in terms of making in adsense because I thought that wasn't bad traffic for something I have never heard of.
  • Any value offer, freebies or specialties in the forum? That would more driving people to your forum
  • The most important 2 things on forums are content and value. So that they keep coming back to read and post.
  • Getting a good forum started is really HARD and requires a LOT of start up cash. I'm being completely serious with you here...

    If you don't have a good $10k+ to invest in a forum then don't start it out at all. I've run several forums and three were miserable failures but the forth one was a success. Still, I sold the forum because you need to put so much effort and time into it.

    If you're actually very serious about running a good forum here are a few tips:

    1) Delete all those sections. You have WAY too many for you size (even a big forum shouldn't have that many sections). This is a mistake all forum amateurs make. Delete and move the content into maximum 8 sections - I would recommend 5.

    2) Remove the adsense (since it's against their TOS if you're going to be offering incentives to post in the forum - still you're not gonna be losing on a lot of money) and offer incentives for posting in the forum. Get ads on other competitor's forums, general paid per click and paid per download sites (where people will work hard to earn little money) and such places. Offer them $1 for 10 posts or $10 for 100 posts, etc.. (make sure to include quality control and that you're allowed to neglect some of their posts if they're low quality in your TOS for this marketing campaign). Basically, get the forum filled up with content. You have about 1000-2000 posts right now. You need 50,000 posts and active members in order to start true promotion.

    3) After you've got the forum active and filled up with content, DON'T just stop your campaigns right away. Keep them running while you do promotion on PPC sites (Yahoo works really well) and use other marketing techniques to get it going.

    Hope this helps
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  • You can monetize it with Adsense or banner ads and make sure that you drive enough traffic to it. You can also use their email addresses to send them offers once in a while after you have offered them some useful content.
  • I have been trying to go through the adsense TOS and dont see the part where it might raise an issue with this forum. Could someone please point me in the right direction.

    I have been reading on these two pages

    https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms

    https://support.google.com/adsense/b...n&answer=48182

    Also thank you Ben, for the advice
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    Can this forum with 300+ members be monetized?

    I am helping someone to get there forum more traffic and also come up with a monetizing strategy . There isnt a lot of traffic, around 2500 visits for the last month and 1200 unique visitors. So obviously adsense isnt doing much. The forum is about Case Modding, every month they run a contest where the members post there Case Build and the community decides the winner. The prize is $50 (there will be more contest put into place down the road)