help

[mrt]

i have a forum with 831 registered users ,,, it a bodybuilding forum, i am not verry good with computers but would really like to make some money from it,, we have people posting on it everyday,,i have absolutely no idea where to start though,,if i can make $500 a week from it i would be happy, but truely have no idea where to start, can you help me out??

[Matthew Sherborne]

The subject of how to make money from a forum is one I know pretty well. First off you have a pretty good amount of active users so you're off to a good start.

Do you currently have any advertising going? I monetize this forum with a top banner promoting my own info-products. I sometimes change the banner to display one of my other products in order to funnel traffic to a few different products.

I also run a small Google Adsense ad block in between all of the content pages. This is not a huge money maker as my market (internet marketers) are pretty savvy to Google Adsense and do not click often. However, your market (weight lifters) may be more prone to click on advertising.

For a weight lifting forum, I'd suggest promoting either a CPA program from one of the leading affiliate programs. When you want to stop fooling around with making pennies from sites like Adsense, you may want to try out using CPA ads.

CPA, also known as cost per action, or cost per acquisition, means you can make money per click, per action or per sale dependent upon the network and advertising program you sign up for.

With some of the higher end CPA ads you can make from $50 to $100 or more for a single signup. Here’s a list of a few of the most popular and favorite affiliate networks to use.

Cost Per Action Ads


Azoogle Ads - AzoogleAds - Home - The leading performance based marketplace This is one of the premier performance-based online advertising networks. They’ve been around since 2000, and you’ll find a wide range of products from advertisers to choose form. In addition they update the site weekly with new offers to choose form to use for your sites.


Copeac - Copeac - Communicate - Perform - Achieve Short for communicate, perform, achieve, the Copeac affiliate network is one of the most popular. Copeac delivers CPA (Cost-Per-Acquisition), CPC (Cost-Per-Click) and CPS (Cost-Per-Sale) ads and has a medium assortment of different product markets to choose from.


Rocket Profit - RocketProfit.com Affiliate Network With Rocket Profit you can make anywhere from 50 cents per lead to $110 per each paid trial. With over 150 advertisers to choose from there’s a good chance you’ll be able to find on that works for your site.


Hydra Media - Hydra - Performance-based CPA advertising affiliate network for advertisers, agencies, and online publishers Hydra Media is another top tier CPA affiliate network that consistently get good feedback for ease of use and range of advertisers. This one works well for giving away those free gift card awards you see all over the internet.


Commission Junction- Commission Junction - A Global Leader in Affiliate Marketing, Online Advertising and Search Engine Marketing Commission Junction is the place to got to find some of the leading affiliate programs online. If you want to start a BANS store to promote eBay, you’ll need to have an account here. They currently boast of having over 800 advertisers to choose from.


The next one is also a CPA type program but instead of dealing with primarily physical products it's a marketplace where you can promote digital products.


ClickBank - Digital Products Retailer: Affiliate Program & Sell Online - ClickBank ClickBank is one of the easiest programs to get started with. They deal primarily with info products. They have a product marketplace where you can search for products that fit your niche. Once you’ve found one you can generate a link to the product owners website. Place the link on your site, inside an image or in the content of your page to link to the author’s sales page. Whenever someone clicks through and purchases, you get paid. You can typically make commissions ranging from 50 to 75%. They cut checks every two weeks and the minimum payout is $10.


If you've got an idea to promote your own branded merchandise here's an option to get that rolling:



CafePress -CafePress.com: Shop, create or sell what's on your mind with custom T-Shirts, unique gifts and more.

Sell your own merchandise with your very own design including t-shirts, posters, mugs and bumper stickers. You can promote your own books printed on-demand along with your own audio and data cd’s.

Getting more targeted forum traffic

You should think about getting backlinks with social bookmarking, commenting on related niche blogs, create free press releases and submitting to the best article websites to build up your incoming links.

These methods will all increase your natural search engine results. In addition a good way to increase the revenue is to bring in more users who in turn will generate additional content which will bring in more website visitors. You could try running a Google Adwords campaign to promote your forum for a while to jumpstart the activity and get more people involved.

[mrt]

wow thanks for all the information, i havnt got time right now but later tonight ill be checking out all your suggestions,,,i truely appreciate it

[Matthew Sherborne]

Let me know how monetizing your forum is going. I'd really like to hear how successful your are. I've been going back through some of my older html sites and replacing Adsense with relevant affiliate products and offers.

One of the ways I'm doing so is looking at what's turning up in the Adsense ads. Then seeing if they have a affiliate program. Sort of cut out the "Google" middleman and make more money that way.

It's funny, but on my Myspace related site I average about .005 a click from Adsense. When I started replacing Adsense with a related affiliate program that paid per sale, I make about $1.25 for each sign up. Not every click equals a purchase so I've changed the layout and put the CJ ads near the top and Adsense at the bottom.

This way if they decide not to follow the higher commission link I may still grab them with related Adsense ads below the fold.

[mrt]

havnt really started yet aint got round to it, keep meaning to , how much money do make from the net??

[Matthew Sherborne]

Well, let's just say I'm very comfortable and making a full time online income since 2005. I've currently got around 80 websites in a wide variety of niche markets and ten info-products.

I think your last statement says a lot about one of the major hurdles facing people when they try to make an online income.

It was..."havnt really started yet aint got round to it, keep meaning to" Don't mean to sound too harsh, but without taking action it's impossible to see any real change.

One of the things I struggled with for a long time was taking action on everything I was learning. I just got wrapped up in trying to take in as much information as possible about online marketing that I lost focus on the goal.

Which is to actually... "make money online," not to... know everything about "how" to make money online. Without setting goals, focusing and taking action it's impossible to achieve as much as you want. There are far too many distractions online.

One of the ways I now do this after much trial and error is to brainstorm at the end of the day the most important tasks I need to accomplish the next day to move my online business forward.

• I write these tasks down.
• I give each one a time limit.
• The next day I work on each task, one by one.
• I mark off completed or not at the end of the time limit.
• I move on to the next task.

Without written goals your mind wanders and bounces around without real focus. You wouldn't believe how much this has effected everything from my productivity and how much I get done, to how much better and focused I feel.

[mrt]

Originally Posted by Matthew Sherborne

Well, let's just say I'm very comfortable and making a full time online income since 2005. I've currently got around 80 websites in a wide variety of niche markets and ten info-products.

I think your last statement says a lot about one of the major hurdles facing people when they try to make an online income.

It was..."havnt really started yet aint got round to it, keep meaning to" Don't mean to sound too harsh, but without taking action it's impossible to see any real change.

One of the things I struggled with for a long time was taking action on everything I was learning. I just got wrapped up in trying to take in as much information as possible about online marketing that I lost focus on the goal.

Which is to actually... "make money online," not to... know everything about "how" to make money online. Without setting goals, focusing and taking action it's impossible to achieve as much as you want. There are far too many distractions online.

One of the ways I now do this after much trial and error is to brainstorm at the end of the day the most important tasks I need to accomplish the next day to move my online business forward.

• I write these tasks down.
• I give each one a time limit.
• The next day I work on each task, one by one.
• I mark off completed or not at the end of the time limit.
• I move on to the next task.

Without written goals your mind wanders and bounces around without real focus. You wouldn't believe how much this has effected everything from my productivity and how much I get done, to how much better and focused I feel.

that is awesome , ok im going to start tommorrow i might even keep a log on here so people can make suggestions and so i can keep tabs on what im doing if thats ok??

[Matthew Sherborne]

Keeping a log here to track your online progress sounds like a great idea. Start a new thread and give it a descriptive keyword title to get people to take a look. Should be interesting!

[mrt]

Originally Posted by Matthew Sherborne

Keeping a log here to track your online progress sounds like a great idea. Start a new thread and give it a descriptive keyword title to get people to take a look. Should be interesting!

yeah ill definetly start the log then!!, didnt have time to start today but as soon as i do its all systems go