Forums can be a great way to make money online for both webmasters and average users. Whether you have a particular online skill or a great community, here are more than twenty ways you can begin making money with forums.
Offer Your Services
The first stop when earning additional money online with forums is by offering your preexisting services to board members.
Depending on which board you frequent, there are often many users which own websites, need design work or could use additional help with their online projects.
Using forums, you can offer your own services such as:
- Content Writing. Many website and blog owners need fresh content for their websites and link building campaign. Try offering your own writing through individual articles or in packages. Once you have a client on board be sure to go the extra mile to keep them for the long-term.
- Link Building. Link building can often be tedious work especially in comparison and weight against time. Time is very precious to a busy webmaster or small business which is best served to work on the main content and business of the site. Try using what you know now about building links to your own website and offer these services to forum members.
- Design Services. If you know design your services are always in high demand. Your service doesn’t have to stick to full website design – try using your skills to offer banners, design elements, website touch ups or score a few jobs doing logos. The limit is endless once you pick up a few skills in design.
- Video Production. A video editor which comes packaged with your operating system or could be easily found online. Video is quick and easy – try offering video editing or production for website owners and small businesses. Promotional videos are in high demand as the web moves toward this new media platform.
- Search Engine Optimization. SEO is actually quite easy because many of the main factors can be done by anyone with a little bit of HTML knowledge. Try offering websites and small businesses SEO services to help boost their rankings – you could even package it with link building!
- Consulting. After months or years of threads in your expertise you could make a name for yourself. Eventually, you could leverage your forum posting as a way to find clients for consulting. Point back to the forum and show your threads, get community feedback and you could be sitting on a great way to make some decent money.
Offering your services on a forum is one of the best ways to get started making money online. One tip which can easily help you going is to be active on the forum: reply in threads, create new ones, go for a sticky post and message people that you think could benefit from your services.
Get Paid To Participate
Wouldn’t it be great if you could be paid to start threads, comment in others and be active on a forum? Wait, you can do this! Many forum owners will pay for your participation or at least share revenue for bringing in new members and readers.
Here are a few ways you can make money by participating:
- Help It Grow. Forums are a beast to start because of so many already in existences. Not many people want to be active on a forum with only a few threads or members. Websites like KickstartYourForum, PayPerPostForum and ContentCurrent will actually pay you to participate on clients forums.
- Revenue Sharing Forums. Did you know there are many forums which allow you to share advertising revenue? After enough participation you can pull in additional money for what you’re already talking about. Bonus: Write a great guide that becomes stickied and you could earn for years!
- Moderate. Once a forum picks up it’s difficult for the forum owner to keep an eye on it at all times; they often will seek out moderators. If you’ve participated and created a great relationship on the forum you will often be the first contact when forum owners need to find moderators. Your job will be mostly, well, monitoring and moderating but if it’s a large enough forum you can bring in some nice money.
- Sell Your Signature. Located on the bottom of your replies and threads will sit your most valuable asset: your signature. If you’ve been active for years this is a goldmine because of it being located on a massive amount of threads. You can sell your signature to those that are interested on websites like SigTrader or offer it on webmaster forums.
Forums can last for many years and become a central hub for networking, learning and having a great time. Whether you start on an up-and-coming forum or join an old one; you can find ways to eventually turn your extra time into cash.
Sell Products
Suppose you’re into affiliate marketing or have your own product to offer – you can use forums as a perfect way to not only spread your brand but make a few extra bucks by selling your own products or affiliating others!
Here are a few ways you can make money by selling products on forums:
- Affiliate Products. Affiliate marketing details selling other peoples products in exchange for a commission. Although you should never push a product out front because it comes across as spam, you can use your forum signature to place your own affiliate link.
- Sell Digital Media. If you’ve created your own product such as an eBook, video series or audio guide you can surely find those interested in what you have to offer. Because you’ve already established yourself as an expert in the forum, you can more easily find customers for your own products.
- Sell Software or Apps. Tech savvy webmasters often frequent forums to stay ahead on the latest and greatest software or app which will help them online. If you’ve created a great piece of software which could help fellow members don’t be shy by offering it to those on the forum.
- Sell Physical Products. Many forums that center on a physical hobbies will often have a trade/sell section. If you have additional items or your own products, try selling them through the forum. Not only can you build a great reputation as being the person with the goods but you can later talk about it with the buyer in a thread.
- Sell Digital Estates. Two items which often go well for selling on forums are websites or domain names. If you scored a great domain name or have a popular website you want to move away from go ahead and offer it up on the forums.
As you can see, you’re not limited to just a few options when selling products through forums. Really, anything can be sold on forums but there may be some time before it moves. Although, in comparison to paying for listing on eBay or a cut through Amazon, if you can wait you can benefit.
Start Your Own Forum
If you’re really looking for a way to make money with forums than there’s only one choice: start your own. By far, the best forum software is VBulletin but there are free alternatives such as PHPBB. Overall though, VBulletin is one of the standards on many of the largest forums – you can’t beat years upon years of usage, ratings and praise.
Here are a few ways you can make money running your own forum.
- Create A Membership. If your forum contains the best secrets and guides to the web or offline activities you could be in for quite an opportunity. Give visitors enough teasers to see the great discussions and community up-front and you may have a new customer that will subscribe for months or years.
- Paid Listings. If you ran your own forum you could have a payment structure which could give additional freedom to those that wish to sell products up-front. Instead of forum users relying on signatures, you could charge to let them create entire threads around their products or services.
- Exclusive Areas. One of the best ways to monetize your own forum is by allowing everyone to participate but have an exclusive area where even better threads are located. Long-term members will eventually want to see what’s offered and soon join your exclusive area in exchange for a small fee.
- Advertise. Running your own forum allows you to place ads as you wish across threads and in various locations. Advertising revenue is a great way to make money on the forum; a twist is to offer people to pay so they can opt out of seeing these advertisements – it’s kind of like a membership site (but not).
- Sell It. If you create a forum with thousands of members, you could easily fetch a pretty amount of money. Unlike selling a single website the real value comes from your memberships – interested buyers want to see the numbers and are willing to pay more for active participants.
Starting your own forum can be time-consuming but the benefits are inherent. As the community forms and threads spring up every day you’ll be filled with accomplishment. Eventually, you can begin earning some money for all the hard work you’ve invested.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are plenty of ways that you can make money online with forums. Yes, depending on which method you choose to use it will take some time to get started but think of it this way: if you’re already using a forum, why not go ahead and make a few extra bucks!
Hopefully this post has helped you find a few new ways you can use forums as a way to earn online revenue. Now, what have you to say about making money with forums? Any tips?
Bit of advice to anyone thinking of setting up a forum in a bid to earn money. It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of luck, eve more hard work and a masive load of extra luck..
Well said Dean.
What’s discouraging is that there are so many well established forums already on the net that it’s hard for any new forum to get started unless you have a lot of marketing and a community to back you.
Case in point: I joined this really great forum with a few other people – probably 50 people in total – it was great to be on a such a personal level but it was literally impossible to get people to sign up because they would just use the bigger ones out there.
Just like your blog, you have to stick through with it, keep creating content, build one member at a time.
I have to say…very info packed article Murlu…
Totally agree with you about how very hard it is to get a new forum started when there are hundreds of them out there..
It takes a lot of work and patience to build up traffic to a forum….Unless you already have a community…
Oops…Looks like something happened to the comments I posted below…
Anyway…I have to say very info packed article Murlu !!!
I totally agree with you about how hard it is to start up a forum when there are already hundreds of them out there…Unless one already has a community online…
Very interesting Murlu, I didn’t know you could get paid for most of these things. I have experienced the power of posting on a regular forum. I still get emails about a business I shut down almost 3 years ago and I think it’s partially because I was a big poster on a certain forum. I haven’t killed the URL for the old business because it’s the #1 referrer to my website still!
Glad you enjoyed the post Jennifer and that’s amazing that you’re still getting leads from activity years earlier. A sticky post can be really powerful and not all that hard to create because most people just start one-off threads; if you take the time to create a great resource you could say stickied for years! I visit a few forums and I’ve literally seen the same few stickies from members that aren’t even active anymore for nearly a decade – that’s powerful.
Kinda makes me wish I was really active on a forum. I really didn’t realize there was much point besides dissemination of information and back-links.
Thanks
Steve
I have a soft spot for forums and still believe they’re the best social platforms on the web. The problem with so many of the recent social media sites is that it’s often just megaphones and quick conversations. Forum threads can go on for years, you meet people that become “ah, it’s this guy/gal again”, flame wars and board drama haha.
I’m sure you could find a forum or two which can fit you Steve; if you can’t, start your own
Oh I am sure could find dozen’s just don’t know where I would scare up the time to be active
Yeah, between blogging and keeping up with your own branding with social media, it can be difficult to find the time to do many things online these days. You have to find what you’re great at and go after it all!
Interesting post. I didn’t know sigs could be sold! haha. I one started out creating a forum but I soon came to realize that the market (and almost every other niche market) was already saturated. It was a huge waste of time.
If you MUST have a forum, the best way to create and promote it is if you make one that is related and associated with your popular site/blog.
Right on Alex, if you want a perfect example just look at Problogger. Forums came later but really took off fast because the blog has so much branding already; people were hanging around and now that they have a forum they’re actively using it.
Mate,
This really is one of the best posts you have ever written, and one of the best posts i have read in a while. I think it rings especially true for me atm because I am just starting to leverage the SEO skills I have learned online to other arenas. Not forum marketing, but your post echoes the power of leverage so well.
Bloody awesome mate, it’s nearly 2am and you kept me up it was that good!
This is going to see a lot of link love – it better I tell you, here let me start…
Glad you enjoyed it Alex,
Even when writing this post I didn’t realize that there would be so many different ways to benefit from Forums in terms of making money. As you said, really shows you that even though there’s a perceived idea behind a platform that there are always new and innovative ways to use it.
Think of this post beyond your normal activities and realize that even the tiniest thing you do can be bridged to other area.
I know you’ve really stepped up working on Article Marketing; consider that you can bridge it to other companies, use it for non-profits, build traffic, links, personal branding and so much more. Case in point: You don’t have to think of a skill in only one light – find how you can use your skills to help others in ways they’d never imagine!
Murray what a stand up post full of great advice. I remember when I was new to digital point I would sell my forums signatures all the time! I did well too because I have like 2000 posts.
I don’t have much time to spend in forums anymore so when I do visit my time is limited. At one point I made pretty decent money from my forums marketing efforts.
You even has a few things here I never tried so props to you!
Thanks for your real-world insight Brian!
The leveraging power of your forum signature must have been amazing since you had so many posts.
A quick thought comes to mind: If you were to have a joint account with a friend (or even outsource) some posts you could easily be across tens of thousands of pages on the larger forums. You could really command a price then!
Thanks for your input.
Very detailed article I had never considered making money with forums until now. I can’t believe how much good advice you have in this post really great article!
Great idea, I am thinking about creating a membership site in the near future