if you run a forum, you normally have one or more topic of interest your users share. If you have a lot of users that share the same interests, you are interesting for advertisers. Listen carefully to what your users say. Do they recommend products? If so, try to find out if you can sell those products or try to find partners offering those products that pay a commission. Offer premium memberships where you offer useful things with a real benefit only to the people that pay for it. Over time, you`ll gain valualble content from your users. Encourage them to produce content and then market the content. Extract the most valuable stuff and create (e)books out of it.
Make your community stronger by organizing real-life meetings. If the community -feeling ist strong enough, set up a merchandising shop (spreadshirt).
There are lots of possibilities to make money out of a community. Just take care that your useres don`t have the impression that money is more important to you than the users :-). If you are successfull, give your community something back.
10-15-2006, 04:23 PM
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