I agree. Adsense is a good way to go and you can combine article marketing with that to boost it up.

Originally Posted by followtom

I definitely agree with Brian.

To really get things rolling, you're going to want to first get a big member base. Once you have that it's game on...

With a huge membership you'll get advertisers that want to buy space, but you'll also be able to email the members since they'll be on your list.

So, the first step in this equation would be to get as many members as possible, or in other words your focus should be on traffic generation to the forum.

Cheers,
-Tom

step 1, good topics
step 2, many link
step 3, many traffic = many member
step 4, place advertisers

webmaster-talk is very good sample

That's a great idea. You're definitely right.

Adsense has worked for many people and I have tried it too..Heard about Adbrite, but have not used it.

Adbrite? It's the first time I've heard of it. I'll check it out.

If I may ask, what's standing of Adbrite?

If you have a forum with active members and / or traffic, and you have not prepared a strategy to monetize your site, you are taking a paycheck and tear it to pieces. Let me say at the outset, there is no magic forumla that I know of that works with any situation. The purpose of this short article is to make you think, to get started on your strategy, and we hope to give you some ideas that you did not already know.

Originally Posted by Woodcs82

How do you Effectively Monetize a Forum?

Thanks!

-C

Depending on the forum, create something that is unique and sell it.

-contextual advertising [adsense] is very good, especially when google scans your site and serves ad based on the content. Some niches are very profitable becaue the cpc is high, other niches adsense is pretty low paying.

-you can also get people to sign up to your newsletters and send them tips, articles, reader digest and place approporiate advertising on as well.

-CPA can be good on certain sites, e.g. some niches don't pay because they're full of young people, students etc, getting them to participate on surveys can get you to generate money [comission] from a target group that dont spend money.

It's all about understanding your user base really, what is the niche/community, is there products and services relating directly to the niche?

If not what complimentry services are out there that your users may like.. eg. webmasters [will be interested in seo and web hosting as a given], but may well be interested in anti-copy monitoring of their site articles for instance.

You have to be creative and come up with twists, and do a lot of split testing, as I said earlier some niches are good for adsense some are poor. Some you have no choice but to use adsense like forklift trucks, if you have a worldwide ranking site for forklifts trucks, your better off doing adsense, allow google to sort out the geo targeting issues. [plus cpc is high].

For niches like webhosting, well anyone can get webhosting for anywhere, it may be more profitable to liase with web hosts directly and earn $40-$50 per sale, then to earn $1 per click.. as the ROI is a lot better with the affiliate commission.

Fine some sponsors that are relevant, i have seen there are so many forums that are doing this ....

I recommend cpm ads for forums.