Community Finances | Online Communities | Build an Online Community

3rd June, 2008 | Community Finances

Dating commission: Revenue share or revenue per action?

Depending on the type of online community you manage, dating websites can be a lucrative source of income. Many dating affiliate programs offer a range of commission structures. How do you determine which is best?

Make more money from your online community

Some people say you can’t make money from online communities. I say that you can make money from online communities; you just need to experiment and involve your members - this article will explain how.

How your competitors can make you more money

Keeping an eye on your competitors is important. Knowing who they are, what they are doing and what their customers (members) are demanding will help you improve your own website. When considered this way, competitors can be a positive influence on your site - they can even help you make more money.
How online communities make [...]

How much are online forums worth?

As online communities become an ever more important part of the online experience, you might expect the value of forums to be ever-increasing. To investigate just how much Internet forums are worth, I undertook a little research.
Recent online forum sales
By browsing through the SitePoint Marketplace, I collected details of all recent forum sales that were [...]

Revealed: My online community revenue breakdown

I listen to the readers of this blog - an online community will always struggle to succeed if the community developer fails to listen to its members. I consider a blog just as much of an online community as a forum or a social network - all are based around interaction and dialogue sharing.
Readers of [...]

The easy way to decide if AdSense is right for you

Many websites make their initial revenue through Google AdSense for the simple reason that the program is easy to apply to and is easy to implement. The contextual advertising often helps ensure that the ads being shown to your visitors are relevant to your site’s content, making the ads far more appropriate (and likely to [...]

See how easily you can make more money from your forum

I often hear complaints from forum developers who say it is harder to generate revenue from forums compared to other websites. This doesn’t have to be the case - as long as you target your advertising to your audience and experiment, you can earn good revenue from a forum-based website.
Understand your audience
I have harped on [...]

Who else wants more advertising revenue?

A lot of people develop a website to make money. I would wager that most of you reading this blog are aiming to make money from your website - maybe not now, maybe not in the forseeable future, but maybe eventually.
Expressing a desire to make money from your website is nothing to be ashamed of [...]

Warning: Big advertisers hate forums

As soon as your forum is generating huge amounts of content and traffic every single day, advertising networks will be desperate for your business, right? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way - many advertisers hate your website, regardless of how good it really is.
Advertising networks frown upon user generated content
It doesn’t really matter how popular [...]

Make recurring commission your preference

What would you rather earn by sending a visitor away from your site? £5 if they subscribe to your advertiser’s site or £2.50? Sometimes the smaller option could make you more money if you push for recurring commission.
Recurring commission: Short term pain for long term gain
If you are running affiliate ads on your website, you [...]

Always keep track of your advertisers

Back in June, I wrote about the importance of contingency plans. The same month, I wrote about how you can determine who your Google AdSense advertisers are. Both articles are important - imagine if you are banned from AdSense or any other ad network you use. How would you recover the lost revenue?
Always keep a [...]

Always keep advertising relevant!

One of the reasons for the success of Google AdSense is its relative effectiveness at understanding the content of your site and showing ads relevant to your site’s theme.
If you want to make money from your website it is essential that you ensure your advertising is always relevant and appropriate for your audience.
Why advertising should [...]

Never forget text link advertising

In this day and age of graphical sumptuousness and ‘Web 2.0‘ it is easy to forget about the humble text link advert as a revenue stream. I find text link adverts are my most profitable revenue stream - never disregard them!
Why text link adverts?
Visitors come to your site for content. Most of your content will [...]

Who are your Google AdSense advertisers?

Do you want to find out who is advertising on your site via Google AdSense? As you should already be aware, you are not permitted to click on your own ads, so how do you find out who those advertisers are?
This article will show you an easy way of identifying the URL behind each ad [...]

Beware of ad burnout

Many of us rely on advertising to pay the bills and financially reward ourselves for the hard work we invest in our sites.
I have written a few articles about advertising techniques in this blog, but today I want to write about a phenomenon known as ‘ad burnout’.
What is ad burnout?
Ad burnout happens when your visitors [...]

Advertising placements are exit points

I have talked about the pros and cons of advertising in many articles on this blog, but today I want to write briefly about an additional consequence of placing advertising on your site - encouraging visitors to leave!
Visitor retention is the key to a successful website
If your website is not attracting and retaining its visitors, [...]

Use advertising to add value to your site

Advertising. Adverts. Ads. Whatever you call them, for many sites they are a necessary requirement to pay the bills (and hopefully turn a profit). Most visitors accept the odd ad here and there as a necessary evil in order for them to consume your content - however, have you considered that advertising can actually add [...]

Use advertising as a motivator

If you are like me, you tend to procrastinate instead of working through that ‘to-do list’. Motivation can be a problem that affects us all from time to time - it often takes me a good few hours each day before I get started on anything productive.
Repetition is something that drives me crazy; if something [...]

Less AdSense is more AdSense

If you use Google AdSense to monetise your site, you may know that you are able to place up to three AdSense units on each page of your website. Using more than one ad block may not be effective though, and I will tell you why.
The AdSense pricing structure
The majority of ads on your site [...]

Optimising Google Adsense

Many of us monetise our websites through Google Adsense - indeed, AdSense is one of the revenue streams implemented on Just Chat. I only place the ads on the chat forum pages; other areas of the site are monetised through other advertising and affiliate programs. I thought I had optimised and implemented AdSense quite well [...]

Advertising choices affect your site’s credibility

A lot of people setup a website in order to make money. A good way of monetising your website is through advertising - but be careful when implementing advertisements as they can affect the credibility of your site.
Always remember that your website is a brand. You work hard at building this brand, so do not [...]

Are you paying your taxes?

It seems that here in the UK, the Inland Revenue is really starting to take a strong interest in people who are making money online but have not declared themselves as self employed, and are therefore not paying any tax on their income.
Warnings have started to appear on eBay reminding people that if they are [...]

Want more money? Ask!

Many community websites are monetised nowadays, whether through Google Adsense, Affiliate Links or paid posts / paid links etc - the list is virtually endless!
How happy are you with the rates you are being paid? Are you sending an advertiser a lot of traffic and think you should be getting paid more? Well ask for [...]

Death and taxes

There are three things that are certain in this world - death, taxes and the fact you CAN build a successful online community if you work hard
I have been reading a few blogs of late which talk about tax. Unfortunately if you are making money online, the government will no doubt want a [...]

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