If you have a forum with an active membership and/or considerable traffic, and you have not worked out a strategy to monetize your site, you are effectively taking a paycheck and tearing it to pieces. Let me say from the start, there is no magic forumla that I know of that works with every situation. The goal of this short article is to get you thinking, to get you started on your strategy, and hopefully give you some ideas you were not previously aware of.
What is monetization? Monetizing a website is similar to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or optimizing a site to rank and interface well with the major search engines - only you are optimizing it to make money. What goes into this will change as technology changes or new revenue streams become available. The most common ways to monetize a site are with ads (Google Adsense, banners, text links, and so on), exclusive memberships, and donations - and, often, all three. While some websites, especially content sites, can be run on peanuts, the bulk of your expenses being in bandwidth, forums are quite different. Forums are powered by a front-end script and a SQL database on the backend. It's not just static HTML pages and a couple of images. As forums grow, they need more expensive hardware to keep serving up their content at a satisfactory speed. The most popular forums are actually running on clusters, that is, several servers, each handling a specific component. You might have a server dedicated to DNS requests; another in the cluster that just runs Apache (i.e. the HTML and PHP side of things), and one or two servers that do all the SQL work. My point is this: no matter what your size or your forum's hardware needs, your time is valuable and resources cost you money. Most importantly, nowadays everyone knows this. You are not going to drive your members away because you decide to monetize your website. Just don't go overboard.
The big question everyone asks is what ad network to use and where to place the ads to get the highest revenue. There's a library of articles on the net on these subjects and I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the subject. You'll have to do your own research there. The one thing I have seen the various "experts" almost all agree on is that you need to experiment. Try a few configurations, try a few ad networks. Some webmasters make more on Yahoo and others on Google, and still others on the other networks. Another thing that seems to be repeated often is that webmasters tend to do better when they place their ads closer to where a user's attention and mouse are. This almost certainly means placing your ads near your website's navigation links and then again as close to the actual content as you can manage. You do *not* want to crowd things in and confuse and irritate your members, you just want to give a polite nudge that says, "these are the companies and products that help fund my website". While you want to draw their attention, they should also be able to easily ignore it if they are not interested.
A good way to find where the eye and mouse gravitate is to surf to other content sites that you have an interest in and pay attention to where your eye first hits and then the few times thereafter as you make your way to the content. After making a few notes with a couple of sites, you will, if it's not already obvious, have a good idea of where to place your own ads, membership offers, and donation buttons.
For vBulletin forums, usually the best places to put these things is right below the navigation (often the Navbar template, other times the Header), in the Footer, usually just above or just below the links there, and then with your content, which would be the Showthread template. I personally think putting it after the code below is a good place:
PHP Code:
<if condition="!$show['search_engine']">
<div class="smallfont" align="center">
<strong>«</strong>
<a href="showthread.php?$session[sessionurl]t=$threadid&goto=nextoldest" rel="nofollow">$vbphrase[prev_thread]</a>
|
<a href="showthread.php?$session[sessionurl]t=$threadid&goto=nextnewest" rel="nofollow">$vbphrase[next_thread]</a>
<strong>»</strong>
</div>
</if>
If you have a left or right column, just below the most popular content or navigation is usually the best place to put skyscraper ads or text links.
Part Two
So, now that you have an idea of the why and the how, let me share some examples of monetized forums so you can look at just how they do it.
*
WWW.WEBHOSTINGTALK.COM
WHT puts their ads just below the navigation, below the footer navigation links, sells text space in the very top header, and also offers Premium Memberships that tie into their "Find a Host/Get a Quote" service. The balance of ads versus content is definitely not obstrusive.
*FORUMS.DIGITALPOINT.COM
They put a small banner in the upper right. The one thing they do different, and worth mentioning, is that below the very first post they put their Google network ads. As mentioned above, they are putting it directly where the eye will go and this is a good thing. As you read the series of posts made on the thread, you cannot help but to encounter it, and yet it is easily ignored.
*
WWW.SPRINTUSERS.COM/FORUM
Now, I am citing this example because it's not really a question of where they put their ads as where *didn't* they put them. If you are not running a giant board with a massive corner on the forum content market like this popular forum, you will highly likely turn away your member base, who will go to your competitor with less flash and ad spam. The reason Sprintusers can get away with it is because they are an established, highly popular, highly active forum with a similarly high quality of content.
You should be able to get many ideas of where you can place your own ads. Some notes: again, they have ads covering their navigation and content. They have massive ads that you can kill by becoming a member. This is a very common way to monetize your forums. You offer additional features in your Premium Memberships. Examples might be, as above, removing most of the ads, especially the annoying ones; more space for Private Messages; ability to use and upload a custom avatar; ability to use a signature or that and advertise in their own signatures; special titles; access to private forums, and so on. They also sell Sponsorships, where members or companies can sponsor a specific forum.
Part Three
A couple more things before the article comes to a close. vBulletin.org is your friend (if you are vBulletin customer). Nearly all, if not all, of the ad serving and membership functionality you see being used by the forums above are available, in similar or exact form, on vBulletin.org. There's a lot of options. Just don't overdo it.
Lastly, if you are selling memberships, you need to follow the rules above. You won't sell memberships if you don't have good reasons for members to upgrade and a prominent place to sell them. If you are selling advertising space, you don't have to follow the same rules for ad placement. Advertisers are accustomed to a *little* searching for an "Advertise" link. They will check the top navigation, the side navigation, and the footer links for a link if they are interested. You don't have to be as blaring as you do with your advertisements, just make your link to your advertising rates and placements easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to sign up for.
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