You really don't have enough traffic to make a killing on advertising ... yet. For now, focus more on driving to and maintaining traffic within your community. Check out our Building a Community forum for some tips.

The first thing that you want to do is try to get users to visit a couple of pages per visit. At least 5 for a good community. That would effectively give you 20,000 pageviews a month with 4,500 unique visitors.

Unfortunately, forums are very rewarding, but what they aren't (right now, at least) is very profitable. For a starting out community, expect to average just $2 or $3 CPM tops with AdSense. With everything optimized right, and a steady flow of regularly visiting forum visitors, you could probably pull off about $50 a month off of AdSense alone.

AdSense would definitely be my first try. You might also wish to try Yahoo's Publisher Network and see how that performs. Some say it's better and some say it's worse than AdSense.

However ... I think with your traffic levels, a definite primary goal is to build up your traffic more before going after ad dollars.

cscgal is right dont expect to make a fortune on a forum. Even with that much traffic as you saw for yourself. Another suggestion is maybe the ad placement on your forum now is not working. Try changing it around and see what happens. Trial and error. Moreover if you want to make more money, I am sure that if you offer advertising spots, or banner spots for a price you might get somebody who is willing to pay for that kind of exposure.

Freddie

good advice, freddie. i will give a try

That's true. Forums are not money makers.

Adsense is a good option, but as the people before me allready said, you can't expect much from your traffic.

Try the above link for some better results

http://adsense.blogspot.com/2005/10/...ps&medium=link

I here Google adsense put more expensive click thru ads on your site if you have more trafiic.

If forums are not money makers, what kinds are? Because some say blogs are the best when it comes to this. Are there any other?

I don't suggest that you depend greatly on google adsense to make a lot of money. And blogs don't neccessarily make you money. Most blogs are used to promote a business or website.
You can check out my site to see a list of "pay per click affiliate programs you can sign up for. They're all free. And there's a couple of useful articles that talks about how you can increase your website's traffic.

I don't think pay per click affiliate programs are the best revenue makers either. I mean, obviously, selling a product or service and doing ecommerce is going to have the most direct ROI associated with it. ie you spend $X to get a visitor, you make $XX when that visitor buys. You just made $XX - X money. Essentially, it's pretty low risk.

Content based sites which rely on advertising revenues are a bit harder to discover their hidden ROI. You could spend $X to get visitors to your site, and you have no idea whether they're sticking around, for how long, whether they revisit often, or just made a one time visit. Advertising money you spend today might not be noticed until next week, for example, when they come back for their third or fourth visit and start to browse the site a little bit more.

For example, with an ecommerce site, you can use Google AdWords or something to pay for visitors definitely interested in what you're selling. With a forums site, you can use Google AdWords to pay for visitors interested in what your site is about - but it's completely hit or miss whether they're a forum junkie I guess that's where really good ad copy comes in! .... But even with that, you have no idea whether their personality meshes well with your community. I think there are just many more factors that come into play as opposed to => Interested in buying this product. It has a very competitive price. I'll buy it.

With a forum or blog or other content site ... you're essentially trying to convince the person why they should give up one of their most valuable assets - their time!

If you just want to build sites that will make tons of money from Google ads, then you need to build sex/relationship sites (not porn), pharmecutical/drug sites, and well, look in your spam folder. All that spam about Cialis and erectile disfunction? Those are the advertisers who will pay $10/click.

The other, less sleazy option, is to go after the corporate realm. They're willing to spend bucks to promote their products, and most corporate products are at least not sleazy. For example, I do contract work for a company that spends $250/day on Google ads for Java programming. Each ad will pay $5/click. If you had a hard-core Java developer site and the ads from my company started appearing, you might make some decent cash. And that company isn't the only one. Find a cluster of deep-pocket corporations who have products that are complementary, and zero-in on that market.

(Personally, I built a relationship advice Web site called "What Do Women Want" and I have to tell you that even with big advertising dollars, it doesn't make much money. I have a very difficult time getting the ads to be correct -- very often, Google will run ads for gay men, or for shower curtains, or for things far outside the demographic. I'm sorta happy with the site, but babysitting Google has not been rewarding enough to do it again.)

-Tony