Adding forum to website that's running well with AS

is it worth the hassle?

[sven1977]

I was wondering, whether I should add a forum to my website, which is running pretty well already (AdSense) with unique content in the 'widget' sector. The forum would of course be about widgets, too. This way my visitors could exchange ideas, questions and tips on their popics of interest, which is also the topic of my website.

My question now:
How much revenue could I expect. I know that forums don't perform very well. But how well do forums perform as supplements/addition to a well performing unique content site?
Any experiences and/or numbers?

[joaquin112]

Forums, if done properly, add "stickiness" to a site. They also target keywords which are impossible for you to target alone. Furthermore, if you have the time, go for it =)

[recidivare]

I'm contemplating this, forums in themselves are notriously poor earners, but if your able to link back to your site from within the forum now and then for relevant articles or information, I think this would be the way to make a forum earn it's keep.

[djohnson]

I am developing a custom forum for one of my sites. It is mainly about the content on widgets and forums will fit perfectly. Users can discuss these widgets, how to make improvements to them, etc. Adsense would work well for this.

If you site was about the selling of widgets, I would think that adsense would not work as well. What is there to discuss if you are just trying to sell a widget?

[Minchor]

We have a site that pulls in over 100K uniques per month. Had a forum for years and AdSense everywhere else on the site BUT the Forum.

We introduced it in the places suggested by Google and got VERY low ctr. It ended up that we pulled it as it was affecting our overall ctr across the site which can mean that your pay decreases as your conversion sucks.

Aside from anything else it also seriously hacked off our forum users, took a bit of time to implement too.

My 2 cents - forum yes, adsense on it - no.

[netchicken1]

Had adesnce on my forum from the same time I developed it on the site.

Income from forum is only 1/3 of the site (at most) CTR is far less. Forum members are used to adverts and tend not to click them

[sven1977]

> I'm contemplating this, forums in themselves are
> notriously poor earners, but if your able to link back
> to your site from within the forum now and then for
> relevant articles or information, I think this would be
> the way to make a forum earn it's keep.

I don't understand what you mean by link back. If I add a forum to my website, it will have the same navigation bar as all other content-pages of my website so there will be plenty of backlinks to the site anyway. Do you mean links in the user's posts? But why would that help me in particular?