Monetizing Message Forums: How you can make money in 2022
Many of us start a message forum because it’s a hobby, and it is fun to create a community from scratch to watch it grow.
But isn’t it a fair assumption to be okay with the fact that we would love to earn a little bit of profit with our forum? We are putting our money into hosting, the domain, and sometimes even the software and everything that goes with it after all, right? We should at least be able to earn that money back. But then again, we should be able to profit from the forum and make it our work because complete dedication is how you make a forum serious work. Yeah, it is wonderful for you to want to make money with your forum because you’ve put in most of the work, and you deserve a little compensation.
Monetizing Message Forums with Google Ads
Google Ads has to be the most common way to monetize message forums, but it isn’t as easy as it used to be to get approved. To get approved for Google Adsense, you need to create a Gmail account and register with that email. Your forum should have some actual content, a basic look, and a privacy policy that matches your forum’s privacy setup. Google wants you to have content, so before even applying for it, I’d work on getting a good amount of content on your forum through post exchanges and general membership. Make sure the bank account you use is under the same name you put in. And don’t tell people to click your ads because that’s the best way to get banned from using Google Ads.
Monetizing Message Forums with the Wikipedia Method
One innovative way to monetize your forum is to use the Wikipedia method of asking for donations to keep the forum online.
For this method, you need to have a community built up. And I don’t mean just any community; it needs to be a community that cares about membership on your forum. Explain to your community that you need to reach a specific goal with donations to remain ad-free and stay open for everyone. Wikipedia folks are taking a paycheck, you know. So, there is nothing wrong with including a profit margin into your donation goals.
If you build an incredible community worth supporting, getting members to financially support it isn’t going to be a complex task in the end.
Monetizing Message Forums with Premium Membership
Premium membership is an excellent opportunity for monetizing message forums because it is a common way of doing it.
In the old days, all you had to offer premium members was an ad-free experience and maybe a custom user title and extra PM space. But it’s the 2020s, and those features are old and obsolete. Nowadays, it would help if you offered something more, much like you’d provide subscribers for a Patreon account. There are many things to offer, including private boards, merchandise discounts, courses, e-magazines, products, services, and even private videos and content.
To effectively sell premium membership on a forum, you need to tap into your creative side.
And there you have it. Monetizing message forums in 2022 isn’t impossible, but it will take more than it used to. You need to be creative and make sure you are being fair to your members. It might take a while to earn a living from your forum but maybe not as long to at least make back what you’ve put into it. Please do me a favor and share this article without someone you think would like it and support Forum Promotion!
