My $2,000/month Forum
In July 2007 GrownUpGeek generated exactly $6,348.73 . It is hard to say exactly how much of that amount was earned directly from the forums area, but I estimate that approximately $2,000 is directly attributed to the forums. And before all you haters post a comment saying “yeah, but you spent $7,000 in AdWords to generate those earnings“, I would like to point out that my total cost of advertising last month (and virtually all months) was $0. For August I did spend a sizable amount for a very creative promotional campaign, and for September I may spend upwards of $2,000 on direct Myspace advertising.. I’ll post more about those at a later date.. As of now they’re still Top Secret.
How I Did It:
- Subscriptions: Subscriptions to our “Private Forums” accounted for $1,665.62 last month. Although many longtime/active members get into our Private Forums for free, others choose to subscribe via PayPal. In our private forums members enjoy relaxed posting rules and they have immediate access to all the late-breaking news about Myspace security vulnerabilities and other items of interest. It’s this premium content only available in the private forums that is the incentive for members to subscribe.
- Kontera: Total earnings for Kontera in July ‘07 was $1,131.90 . Because Kontera does not have channels, it’s difficult for me to say exactly how much of this was from the forums, but since the majority of traffic goes directly to our forum, I’m going to guess that the majority of Kontera earnings was derived from there too.
- Adsense – SkyScraper: We display one 160x600 skyscraper on every forum page. CTR on this is pretty low, but it still generated just under $100
- Adsense – Individual Posts: Several posts in the forum have become popular and receive a lot of SE traffic. Every few weeks I check Analytics and look for these higher traffic posts. On these posts I insert a 468x60 banner just above or just below the text of the post. The cumulative amount of these comes up to about another $100
- AuctionAds: In July AuctionAds generated $136 – Way down from the almost $500 the month before. I believe this is because of how many times AuctionAds was down and not displaying any ads. Whenever this happened I remove AuctionAds for a few days until they fixed the issue. If AuctionAds gets their act (back) together I can easily see $500 a month again. I generally display three ads, based on keywords that I think will interest my visitors. “iPhone”, “printer”, and “beer”.
On a side-note:
We only display ads to non-members. We might be able to get a few more dollars every month by displaying these ads to members too, but IMHO the members would not appreciate the site as much if we did that.
The code below is what I use in Drupal to display ads (or anything) to only non-registered visitors:
<?php
global $user;
if (!$user->uid){
?>
ADSENSE (or anything) GOES HERE
<?php
}
?>
My philosophy is that if I would not like to see something myself, I don’t subject the members to it either. I’ve turned-down dozens of direct advertisers and spammy link-requests and have given up a lot of short-term income because of this, but I am confident that it will pay-off in the long-run – and so far it has.
Like
I’m amazed that you make so much from Kontera. I didn’t have that much luck with is as time went on. So I removed them from my blog. Besides, I got several emails suggesting they were bothersome. I’m glad to see they are working for you.
As far as AuctionAds…it’s so hit or miss. I will make $0.20 one months, and $74.50 the next. On another site with AuctionAds, I see the same result only at a higher amount.
i’m eric. joining a couple boards and looking
forward to participating. hehe unless i get
too distracted!
eric