-
Email Subscribe
Selecting a Good Forum Niche
Choosing the topic of your forum is an important decision. If you have your boards centered around a topic no one wants to talk about, no one will talk about it. There are two things that should be focused on when deciding if your forum niche is appropriate - if you want to talk about it and if others want to talk about it. You need both.
Choose a Discussable Topic
Your topic should be on that can be talked about. You have to be careful not to choose a topic that’s too saturated. If you choose a popular topic, it will be difficult for you to make your forum more appealing that the bigger ones. You’ll have to work much harder, in this case. “you should aim for a niche that’s specific, but not too specific. For example, poetry my be more specific than writing, and thus a good topic; however, Shakespearian poetry is probably too specific. People have to want to talk about your topic. Make sure your topic is not obscure - discussing an unpopular book or creating a forum for the Amish probably won’t generate much activity. :p
Choose a Niche you Enjoy
While still important, choosing a topic you enjoy is still something you should consider. One must enjoy the topic and be knowledgeable in it. Creating a forum, blog, or other website you know nothing about is foolish. You have to personally want to talk about it. Oftentimes, the administrator who runs the forum runs forums on topics they’re passionate about. If you don’t intend to be active in your community, choosing a topic you like isn’t all that important. However, it certainly aids in a forum’s early days and in creating a community.
Ads Kill: Good and Bad Methods of Earning Forum Revenue
Ads kill… just like guns. Oh, wait. Guns don’t kill, people do. The same goes for advertisements; it’s not the advertisements themselves that can kill your website, but rather the placement or type of advertisement selected by the webmaster. Chances are that if you’ve created a forum - or a website of any kind, for that matter - you’ve probably intended to make money from it. Let’s face it - we all have monetary motives. Even if this is not the case for you, you probably wouldn’t mind a little pocket change or for the site to pay for it’s own hosting through advertisements.
When dealing with placing ads on your forum, you must be careful, especially since its common knowledge that forums are difficult to successfully monetize. You may feel compelled to place the ugliest ads that make the most money on your forum; oftentimes, these ads make you loose money in the long run by hampering your forum’s growth. I urge you to tread carefully in this area. while some of these methods will make you money, I’ve found that they’re like a poison to a forum - and it can be deadly. Further on in the post I will go into more detail.
When to Implement Ads
Regardless of what ads you choose to use, I strongly recommend they be implemented ASAP. If possible, start advertisements when your forum is small. While this goes against conventional wisdom, that doesn’t make it incorrect. If you have ad-free forum and suddenly get a boatload of banners on your page, it just might be possible some users might get a little angry or frustrated. On one of my forums I had limited advertisements, but because of a hosting upgrade was forced to ad an Adsense Banner below the first post and a small ad united at the bottom. While many users were very understanding about the situation, several also get angry about it - a few enough to leave. Many of the forum members voiced their annoyance. This is with Google banners. Image if I had added in-text advertising; that would have been a nightmare.
Top Worst Advertisement Methods
- In-Text Links
The #1 worst advertising method you can use for your forum is any form of in-text advertising. While I think this is a legitimate form of advertising, I simply don’t think it’s suitable for the forum. Forum users hate them. Though they do bring in a pretty penny (I’ve heard up to three times your current earnings), I think it’s safe to say that it will hurt your forum’s growth. I know that, as a forum member, if any forum I posted on implemented in-text advertising from a ad network such as Kontera, I would leave. The only time I can see using in-text links are if you use them from day 1 so the users are never surprised, or if you display them only to guests. Not only are in-text ads wretchedly ugly, most of the time they’re not useful to the users. They are very intrusive (in posts, forums, profiles, etc). Don’t use intrusive ads!
- Deceitfully Integrated Ads
The word “integrated” in this case is misleading. Integrated ads are good - ads meant to deceive your users are bad. If you make the users think the ads are threads or posts or a menu, you are deceiving your user. Most forum users aren’t stupid; they’ll know you tried to mislead them. In the end, it hurts your forum. Additional related “deceitful” ads are links mingled in with the users profiles/interests or huge Adsense squares in the users actual posts.
- Popups/Popunders
If you don’t know that popups and popunders should never be used on a forum, you shouldn’t be reading this blog.
Top Best Ad methods
- Subscriptions
The #1 best way to bring in money to support your forum is through paid subscriptions. Vbulletin offers a paid subscription system built into their software where you can set prices and payment gateways for users to pay through. Subscriptions are the best way of bringing in revenue because 1) it’s optional; the user doesn’t have to pay unless their willing. With almost all other forms of advertisement the user has no choice in the matter. 2) You can make the payments reoccurring. If you offer the users features they like - and you make supporting your site popular, there’s a very high chance your users will subscribe again. 3) It shows you that you’re doing something right if you can get people to pay money. Typically I give users features like a bigger PM box and a user badge if they become a subscriber. I like to add new features periodically. I’ll likely do a post in a few weeks about forum subscriptions.
- Text Links
Text links are the oldest way to bring money online, and they’re still good at it. Text links are a good method of revenue if they come from a third party that lets you approve the ads or if you sell the text links independently. Text links are a good second method of income for a forum because they’re not intrusive. They’re easy to see, but they don’t get in the users way; furthermore, they typically bring in a steady revenue stream each month.
- Independent, Well-Defined Banner Advertisements
Banner advertisements are impossible to avoid on today’s internet. They can also bring in a decent chuck of revenue. There are a few things I would like to stress about banner advertisements. Most importantly, make sure they’re not too flashy or intrusive. Secondly, keep the position of the banner in mind. Make sure the user knows it’s an advertisement. I like to have a banner either in the header, footer, or sidebar of a forum. This allows the banner to be displayed in a way that is show sitewide but is not deceptive. Keep in mind that banners on forums typically make more money on independent advertisers than through an ad network such as Adsense.
- Strategically placed PPC or Affiliate Banners/Links
I would like to recommend one strays away from Pay-Per-Click and affiliate banners and links in a forum. I’ve tried with them both and haven’t been very successful; with PPC I’ve brought in decent, consistent revenue, but it isn’t anything near what I can make from private advertisers. I’ve had the worst luck with affiliate links on forums also. This isn’t to say they can’t work; I’m sure they do. This is just to say you have to have the right niche; your forum post be about a specific area or field that has affiliate offers users will actually participate in. Affiliate marketing and PPC can be a fantastic forum revenue source if it works for your forum.
In conclusion, be careful what kind of advertisements you use on your forum. What works for some forums might not work for others; this could be because of the size of the forum, the forum’s niche, or even the attitude of the administrator. Moreover, be sure to diversify your earnings. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
Remember, ads can kill!