SEM Tycoon

**johnnyforms** · 11-13-2006, 10:26 AM

Any people with experience care to answer these questions? I don't think it's really giving away any secrets and it would be interesting to know.

What I'd like to know is the rough numbers that people expect to take from a forum. If I look at this forum with 5000 members Lee is charging a total of $3400 pm for the ad spots and then there is Google advertising ontop of that. I don't see any other sources of revenue other than these? So if I give $1600 for google ads that's a nice round $5000 pm. Google could be much more or less than this but I have no experience to judge it upon.

So as a figure running a lively forum you'd expect to make $1 per member a month? This would vary as members come and go so perhaps a better number would be page impressions or posts and the demographic could make a big difference too.

Johnny

**Frito Pie** · 11-13-2006, 05:18 PM

95% of my income comes from one forum.

Direct advertising
Google Adsense
Members subscriptions/upgrades
Online store

Its possible to do very well with a forum but the forum must be vital, growing and a high traffic.

**JustinG** · 11-13-2006, 06:36 PM

About half my adsense is my forum. It's all in the placement baby

**Geiger** · 11-13-2006, 07:47 PM

I would concur. Text placement is crucial for forums.

**MonkeyBiz** · 11-13-2006, 07:47 PM

It depends on traffic and ad placement

**Mike** · 11-13-2006, 08:14 PM

The money you can make depends partly in what kind of forum you have and how much time you want to spend researching for the right advertising that works for your forum.

With some forums, adsense in a couple strategic places works great. For other forums, no matter where you put it, you are not going to get clicks. Private advertising, subscriptions, and even possibly a store as Frito Pie mentioned are other viable routes to take.

There is no dollar figure per member to put to a forum though.

**johnnyforms** · 11-14-2006, 07:35 AM

Thanks for the replies, Mike you say there is no dollar figure, if you run multiple forums, would you have no expectations on expected earnings from a new forum so at least you'd have some targets to work towards?

Frito if I quote you at your low end of stated earnings, $20,000, this means you're earning $19,000 per month from one forum, very nice (said in a borat accent), care to tell me the name of the fourm?

Johnny

**imported_WillB** · 11-17-2006, 04:50 PM

I would also say that advertising isn't the only way of making money
from forums. As Frito mentions above, paid memberships can be a
fantastic means of a regular, stable income from forums.

Forums are about creating a responsive community, which is the same
as building a responsive list, or a thriving membership site or a well
visited blog.

Once people are coming back and feel like they're part of the site
(regardless of what they're doing on the site), they become so much
easier to monetize.

Johnny - "Very niiiiiiiice"

**Will.Spencer** · 11-17-2006, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustinG

It's all in the placement baby

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geiger

Text placement is crucial for forums.

What do you two think of the vBulletin Google Adsense Deep Integration Tutorial?

I'm using a modified version of it over at The Tech FAQ Forum. Among other changes, I am not showing ads to forum members once they login. I also added in the right column, which includes some affiliate ads at the bottom.

**BamaStangGuy** · 11-17-2006, 05:27 PM

I think that is overkill. IMO the leaderboard with images above it will net more money than all those ads integrated into your forum making it look hideous. I have one yahoo ads banner on my entire forum and its in the navbar with images above it. The CTR rate is ridiculously high.

**Emerge** · 11-30-2006, 11:57 PM

/\Don't you have a tutorial of how you did that some where? I thought I read it.

**transburgh** · 12-08-2006, 02:26 AM

So....can anyone give any help with placement?

**BamaStangGuy** · 12-08-2006, 02:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Emerge

/\Don't you have a tutorial of how you did that some where? I thought I read it.

I use photopost to rotate my image ads on my big site. On the rest I just take 4 related images and put them above the 728x90 leaderboard. Then I put the code in navbar template for vbulletin users.