How To Monetize A Forum Website

Many people told me it’s hard to monetize a forum but I believe it can you are just not doing it in right way we all know how well organic traffic converts and forums are known to be 24*7 content generators which pulls lots of search engine traffic s it’s surprising why many people say forum doesn’t convert well.

Before going to the monetizing sections let us look why forum doesn’t not converts well?

Low CTR : Forum owners complain a lot about getting low ctr but I say it’s getting what it’s should get as I have told your before how good search engine traffic converts but forum type of website tends to pull lots of direct traffic too because of your regular forum users and these type of visitor easily caught ad blindness after using your forum daily and thus it makes your forum looks generating more pageviews but less clicks and the clicks you generally get are from search engine traffic.

It doesn’t mean direct traffic is bad as they help forum to grow by building more content and hence increasing organic traffic which we are targeting.

Ways To Get Your Forum Generate Money

Improving ad spot: Changing position of ads brings a lot of difference in ctr you can identify best position through heat map. What is a heat map? It’s a map which tells you where people most click on your forum. You can find your website heat map using markosweb and place your ad in that area to see the magic.

Can I tell you some secret ads right after the first post tens to bring the maximum ctr as after reading the first they eventually read the ads too.

Image ads on the sidebar and top: most people avoid the text written at the sidebar and top so image ads are the best bet for this area.

CPM ads: For places other than the hot spot can be monetize using cpm ads as cpm ads are based on thousand impression and not on clicks hence it doesn’t matter how much click you get you are going to earn your dollar.

Newsletter: If you have large number of members they can be monetize using email marketing when people sign up with forum their email too get registered too and you can use it to mail some relevant clickbank products they might be interested in but don’t overdo it as it may irritate them with your constant email.

Premier Membership: It’s also good method of converting your loyal members you can give them some privileges when they upgrade to pro like allowing them to add more signature, a badge which show pro status, allowing them to add bigger avatar unlocking some special section of forum

Apart from all these you can also focus on improving pageviews of your forum and increase the number of visitors thus eventually earning more in this process. 

photo by 401(K) 2012 on flickr License by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en