What is the best revenue model?

[lakhya]

What is the best revenue model for a forum? I was suggested Google adsense. Besides this anything else?

[victor]

Depends what your forum is for.

If it is for the 100 richest people in the world, you'd probably just want to offer them a facilicy fee of USD25,000 a year. If the content is worth it, they'll get their people to pay your people.

If it is for mainly visually disabled people, then serving adverts using Javascript is likely to be non-productive -- the chances are they have it turned off in the browser, or their assistive technology (like screen readers) do not execute it.

If it is for subsistence farmers in Central Africa, then you need to check that Google has enough advertisers that address that market.

And so on.

[hound_dog]

heh heh ;)

[Musicarl]

Adsense tends to underperform on Forums. I know some people have done well with local sponsors, but that can be a tough sell.

If you provide some information on what topic you'd like to get into, we might be able to come up with some ideas.

[rogerd]

Memberships can be a revenue generator if your forum is very popular and you can create some useful incentives to join.

Sponsorships may perform better than CPC ads.

[gazraa]

i have found that adsense hasn't really worked too well for me on my forum. the forum subject is for a very specific digital camera, the ads getting served are all coming up to buy the camera, but most (95%) of the forum members already have the camera so they aren't clicking.

if the forum covers a wider subject area then adsense may do better. you'll need to experiment with ad positions to get the best return.

if the content is good enough, then maybe some subscription forums could be introduced. bear in mind though that people need to know what the content is going to be like before they subscribe, so you'll need some sort of teaser content for it.