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The question is about marketing. I mean if you have a forum and in it all seo and other marketing stuff is done then how much time it will take to start generating money and traffic?
This was the question for Advertising earnings through forums...
Second, what should we provide in premium membership, if your forum only targets premium membership not earnings from Advertising like Adsense,etc..
Thanks in advance!!
If you want to make your forum premium membership then make it a spam free forum with quality posts and get high PR.
I think Nemanja Can provide us real experience about Forum Earnings. So Waiting for Admin's Post :)
It can be possible to increase posts on the forums..
Premium membership/donation is great way to get money. I'm waiting this feature in IMT :D
This is very hard question to answer, because every forum is different.
but trust me this is not easy thing to do, you need to invest great amount of time and money (much more time) into successful forum,
especially if there is not need for the forum in the first place, this means that you need even more time and money to deal with your competitors.
How much you will earn it depends and it is different from forum to forum
it also depends on what that forum can offer and also on your ability to monetize that forum in the best possible way.
I am hired as a staff in one local forum so I can understand Nemanja feeling on building good forum. For me, you should be able to answer the following question before thinking of monetizing your forum:
- How to make people visit your forum than others?
- Have you managed to solve the common problems occur in the forum management? (i.e. server troubleshooting, spam post, etc)
- Have you already picked a moderator who is an expert in certain field? However, you can’t manage your forum alone.
I am sure is not easy to achieve, Nemanja had to explain it. but if you are serious in maintaining the quality of your forum. You can monetize well.
Okay, now let's say the forum is already popular and a lot of traffic comes everyday. So, what is the best monetizing method in your mind?
Flipping the forum or offering the ads space or what?
My friend from India did to sell his forum for $50,000 on Flippa.
To sell a forum for 50k it has to be pretty good. You can earn from AdSense if your forum is about high paying niche and you have quity traffic mainly from USA,Canada and Europe. Another advantage when you are an forum Admin is members trust you so I tend to buy things you recommend. This works well if the forum is pretty big. Also members tend to visit and comment on your blogs.
I think to having Adsense isn't good idea. You may compose forum rules but you can't guarantee your member follow the rules, right?
So when they're posting something that disallowed by Adsense, the one who will be victim is the forum owner. His adsense account will be banned for sure.
Adsense works fine with forums, at least if you aren't in a niche with many very sensible topics, like e.g. "male enhancement" ;)
In general, forums are great since other people create alot of unique content for you, the moment I'm typing this I'm adding content to IMTalk...you get the idea.
The hard part, why 99% of all forums fail is: Getting an empty forum running. Noone registers or posts on a forum with 5 topics that are 3 months old, except maybe some support forum for a product/software/whatever. In most niches you have a handful of established forums getting all the visitors and a legion of empty, desolate competitors.
So, first of all, know your niche, know your competition and have a look if you can offers something unique, a USP noone else offers. If you are competing with a few 800 pound gorillas, you'll badly need this USP. Could be a special marketplace, a focus on a special sub-niche, some well known industry leaders as moderators.
Then get a few friends or people you know in your business and try to get the forum filled, fast. You need activity, you need new posts daily, you need controversial, shocking and interesting topics, all the things that pull in visitors and make them contribute. It's all about faking, faking and faking till you reach the critical mass and the threads on new members come by themseves. It's all or nothing, zero or hero.
Starting a forum is easy but maintaining is really difficult. You may certainly need a team to monitor it. So it's not that easy as it looks. Premium Membership is great way to earn. You can even use adsense on it.
This is all very true! The keys to success will be research and planning as with anything else in IM. The idea of putting up a forum comes to most sooner or later, but in most cases it is not a good idea. A successful forum takes a lot of maintenance one way or another. If you auto-approve registrations you will either spend a lot of time policing spam posts or have a forum filled with spam. If you manually approve registrations you will spend some time vetting registrations and a spammer will still slip through from time to time. Many will sign up just for the profile link, and a lot of those will not even take the time to fill out their profile, let alone becoming active posters on your forum.Quote:
The hard part, why 99% of all forums fail is: Getting an empty forum running. Noone registers or posts on a forum with 5 topics that are 3 months old, except maybe some support forum for a product/software/whatever. In most niches you have a handful of established forums getting all the visitors and a legion of empty, desolate competitors.
Most forum visitors will be information seekers who are not really in a buying mode. They may occasionally click on an ad, but that is not their purpose for visiting your forum. You should not start a forum as a money making venture. If there is a need to be filled you may have an active forum, but any ad money that you receive should be looked on as a bonus and not the reason for starting the forum.
Building a powerful Forum is harder than making a powerful blog. All forums all credits depends to its members
I think the topic should close after Nemanja's reply because he is the person who is running such kinds of forum since a long time...:)
I would like to know how much money Nemanja is earning from this forum, this answer would solve this question.
There are many ways to monetize a high traffic forum. Personally I would put on some paid adds, if you have a good niche you can get a nice amount of money on monthly base.
The More you will invest Time and money the more you will earn . i am agree with the Nemanja ..!! its not an easy task to earn money from forum ..!!
Every forum is different, it depends from niche to niche.
Forums are not easy to grow, you'd have to have a good tactic, why would members join YOUR forum instead of other big developed ones? It is really hard, and since you are asking, I wouldn't suggest you to start a forum as you don't have a good plan, budget etc.
Luka