Tips for a friend

[Sayf Udeen]

Hey everyone.
I told a friend I would ask a few questions for them.
They are looking at starting a forum, and in the end are hoping to make a small profit to add to their weekly pay. They told me over coffee last night, even if it only pays for one coffee a week, it's something and therefore a win.
They have their subject matter, and as I have run online communities before I gave them some tips.

But one things I couldn't answer for them (as I've always just used Zetaboards) are as follows:
- What is the best looking most cost efficent and functional forum software that will allow you to place ads?

Thanks in advance,
Sayf.

 

[Guardian]

I prefer SMF, others say myBB

 

[dballerp]

I say IPB or vBulletin

 

[katy perry is hot]

You can efficiently place ads on any of those forums that you host on your own (meaning no zetaboards, proboards, freeforums, etc). Vbulletin and IPB are both very easy to place ads, as I have used both and can testify to it.

 

[netsavy006]

I'm not sure of the easiest forum software of which to place ads, but in terms of cost, I've not had a hard time in the past using MyBB (which is free to download), and placing ads on it.

 

[Jay]

First of all, they should not open a forum on any free forum creators (zetaboards, proboards, forumotion, etc). They will need to make their forum from scratch meaning they'll have to find a host (eg. Hawk Host, Hostgator, etc) and will need to manage their own forum via FTP.

Second, If they want to invest about $150-$200 on a paid forum software such as vBulletin or IPB, they could go right ahead. But there are also free forum softwares out there that work just as good such as PhpBB (this forums software) and myBB. All softwares mentioned previously allow you to place ads on your forum.

Thirdly, they can make money buy placing ads from places such as adsbrite, adsense, etc. which pays you about 0.03 cents or so per view, or you can sell ad spaces on your forum to others for let's say $40 a month, etc. The main key is to have a decent amount of traffic on the forum/website.

Hope this helps, PM me if you have any other questions. 🙂

 

[netsavy006]

In terms of making money online in the beginning after you have the forum up (most common is adsense), here's a link with other top companies that are recommended that I always find at the top listings when I search for adsense alternatives:

http://www.rosswalker.co.uk/adsense_top10/

 

[Sayf Udeen]

Thanks for the advice, guys and girls.
I think I'm a part of the project now - we're both quite inexperienced with hosting, domains and that kind of thing. But I'm sure we can get there, perhaps with help. Will see.

Thanks again.

 

[froggyboy604]

Adsense seems like the best way to make money. Amazon Associate ads are good, too if you are good at convincing people to buy from your affiliate codes.

But, you need at least 400-500 impressions from my experience to be making decent money like 3-6+ dollars a day from ads and affiliate marketing.

 

[Joshua Farrell]

Adsense seems like the best way to make money. Amazon Associate ads are good, too if you are good at convincing people to buy from your affiliate codes.

But, you need at least 400-500 impressions from my experience to be making decent money like 3-6+ dollars a day from ads and affiliate marketing.

Plus the fact that the people on your site needs to be willing to click on the ad that is shown.

 

[Guardian]

Yeah, I've had 6000 impressions with one click. Approximately $0.51 so far.

 

[froggyboy604]

I find writing about topics which the average person is interested in will make me more money with Adsense according to my Adsense Google Analytics logs.

My highest earning blog posts on my blog are related to cleaning up junk files on Windows, USB drives, and changing the Cursor on the mouse in Windows, and Toolbars for internet browsers.

My guest is average people are less likely to ignore ads then people who are into HTML, codding, database and other higher tech topics.