Monetizing a forum

money money money money!

[wheel]

I've got a forum that takes 5K+ unique visits a day. I've got a base advertiser that pays for bandwidth and stuff, but I'm moving towards dropping maybe one more block of non-intrusive ads on the site (it's still a hobby site, so I want to balance the user experience with maybe making a bit of money).

What's my best way to monetize the site? (it's in a small niche industry). I'm thinking:
- Google adsense at the bottom of the page.
- *cough* ad network *cough* on the bottom of the page, to drive traffic to some sort of affiliate site.
- option #3?

[vabtz]

for me the best layout is:
one asense block on the right of threads( like googles )
on block on the bottom of every page

if a user is referred from another site ( ie search engine or direct link to a thread ) I display one block above the thread as well.

Something to remember:
Make sure you correct all url's to threads to be referenced in the same manner. This way the google adsense displays the right ads every time.

[Frequent]

Insert the Adsense into the threads instead of at the bottom and sell memberships that grant access to a members only area and blocks the ads being shown to members on all other areas of the forum.

Sure you'll tick a bunch of users off but so long as you warn them about the implementation and explain why its necessary you should come out OK.

On my next forum I'm having Adsense running from the getgo. It may slow things down initially but there won't be a big whine-fest to dread down the road. People dislike change more than they dislike ads.

Freq---

[vabtz]

freq is definitly right about having ad's running from the start.