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Would you pay to advertise your forum?

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Dani AI

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This thread captures the core trade-off well: paid reach can speed growth, but quality and retention decide whether it was worth the spend. Several members touched on pieces of that puzzle (for example, on tracking, on mixing paid and organic, on targeting, and on non-commercial cautions). Below is a compact, practical decision-and-test framework that avoids wasting budget.

Start with a simple value-vs-cost rule: estimate the expected lifetime value (LTV) of a typical engaged member, then compare that to how much you are willing to pay to acquire one (CAC). If LTV > CAC, a small paid test makes sense.

Inputs:
  A = avg monthly pageviews or contributions per active member
  B = revenue or value per 1000 pageviews (or other monetization proxy)
  C = expected months active
LTV = (A * B / 1000) * C   // adjust B to represent non-monetary value if needed

Run short, controlled experiments before scaling. Use one narrow channel, one targeted landing page that prioritizes the "first meaningful action" (register + first post or first return). Track CAC, activation rate (register -> first contribution), and 7/30-day retention. If acquisition drives low retention, pause and invest those dollars into onboarding: reduce friction, seed starter topics, send a concise welcome sequence, and create a small ambassador/referral incentive to turn new members into promoters. For hobby or non-commercial communities, prioritize organic partnerships and content that funnels the right users; paid ads only when the LTV math is clearly positive.

Recommended Answers

All 67 Replies

Member Avatar for Shadezofblack

yeah I would pay.. but not much tho.. I think the people who ask something like $99 to list your site is a bit of a rip off..

commented: NICE Dimmu Borgir banner! 8-) --alc6379 +3
Member Avatar for Pyrothekilla

Same here, I would pay but I would have to know what kind of advertising they were doing and where they were.

Member Avatar for RWD

I use the google adwords and also clicksor to advertise my forum. I get a few clicks from them, but I dont know if it is genuie hits, or from people who run the google/clicksor ads on their site, and just trying to make money for themselfs by clicking the adverts.

Member Avatar for Ted S

Although my forums have mostly been built up by search engine listings and word of mouth I still believe paid promotion is an important piece of the puzzel, espcially for a new forum in the current market. Nearly every major forum niche has dozens of competing sites and growing requires traffic which generally means paying for some of your visitors. No forum should rely completely on piad traffic or even highly on it but it can be a helpful route to take.

Member Avatar for alc6379

I'd say it depends.

Do you intend to generate revenue with your forum, or is this just a "let's get together and be happy" community-type forum? That would be my determining factor on it-- if you intended to make some money off of it, I'd say it's worth investing at least a little bit of money.

Member Avatar for temi

and I do pay to advertise my two forums: UK Webmaster Forums - Webmaster Serve

Temi

[Moderator edit - Links removed, please see forum rules]

Member Avatar for kall

Yup, I would and I do.

Adwords is pretty good with the control you have over spending limits.

Member Avatar for Mighty_Squid

I've been using Google AdWords and I've gotten a lot of clicks but no new members.

My site is for fun. I don't make money on it so I have discontinued for now.

Member Avatar for Dani

I use AdWords only to advertise DaniWeb ... but I am a big budget spender. I invest about half of whatever last month's gross profit was, so it grows each month :) Nothing ever comes out of pocket, so the site pays for itself. I have conversion tracking setup, and there is about a 5% conversion rate for new visitors registering on the forums :)

Member Avatar for Scribbller

Well I dont earn any sort of money from my site so I wouldnt pay for advertisments either, besides my forum has grown up to 555 members in 5 months just with word of mouth advertising.

Member Avatar for HeadBuilder

Well, I started << url snipped to abide by forum policies >> about 2 years ago and advertised quite a bit on Adwords. I still advertise using Adwords, but not as big a spender as I assume Dani would be. My site doesn't earn much anyway. :)

Member Avatar for Danny

Its important to remember that just like any venture, advertising is key to promoting it to large scale proportions.

Keep in mind though, the best advertising is not always the paid stuff.

Getting interviews with online media, entering into contests, registering on sites and leaving your link in your profile, etc, are often much more effective than traditional paid forms of advertising.

Member Avatar for jwenting

I'm with Alex here. If my site were a commercial venture I'd pay for that if it were commercially viable to do so.
If it isn't, word of mouth is excellent advertising. If it's a hobby site you're probably a member of some of the other associated sites with that hobby. Most offer link exchanges for hobby sites (even the commercial sites often have these for free for noncommercial ones), put the URI in your forum signatures, etc. etc.
Far more effective than paying for it for the simple reason that many people will not click on advertising banners or sponsored links in search engines but will visit a site referred to them by a friend or a site they trust for no reason other than that the referrer liked the site.

Member Avatar for Gandalf

Although i voted that i would i still agree with the following:

If my site were a commercial venture I'd pay for that if it were commercially viable to do so.
If it isn't, word of mouth is excellent advertising.

I would add that word of mouth can include banners, text links, and even signatures :)

I even publish a monthly forums signatures travel notes on my blog.

Member Avatar for Atomica

Depends on what advertising we are using.......

My sites visitors/members are all mostly attracted by stickers, posters and T-shirts that have been seen in the loacl area. Did everything myself, design and print and then got everything photocopyed (Execpt for the T-Shirts which where screen printed). But that site has moved on and I am wishing to do it all again for another one.

I do not see any point using AdWords with the exchange rate (every NZ$1 equals to around US$.40 cents). So i have never bothered to look into to. The only other way was to use a banner a local banner exchange. Which did work :D. Ehh my mumbled 2 cents

Member Avatar for bigcurt

Advertising can ALWAYS help.

Member Avatar for arkstfan

My site is sports related so we advertised on the team's broadcasts and had a banner for tailgating and at games.

We've never done any web based advertising. If I were to do it I'd be pretty picky because we get some pretty off-beat ads based on what the google adsense spiders think our site is about.

But you do have to promote/advertise in some manner to ever get traffic. If not for a google ad, I wouldn't have found this site.

Member Avatar for Y2H

No, but I don't know where to advertise. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Member Avatar for dexterz

No, unless I get huge amount of ROI.

<< Signatures to be setup in your user profile >>

Member Avatar for Ted S

In our 4 years ScubaBoard has rarely done any direct advertising (ppcs, banners, magazine ads), however, we do a lot of indirect promotion using stickers, tshirts, banners at events and anything else that will build word of mouth. This has worked well enough and brought us to about 1,000,000 posts. Still, the bigger you get the more you seem to do to keep the growth rate increasing. Word of mouth, inbound links and search engine links keep us growing nicely but we have begun (or I should say, re-activated) some ppc and print ad campaigns. Right now we are spending a few dollars here and there for ppc terms but it's very specific stuff and not really high bidding. The goal os any campaign for a community should be to target those people who will join and participate as best possible. For example, if you run a forum like DaniWeb's which covers hosting advertising for the term "web hosting" would probably not be an ideal use of money, especially if you compete for a top spot. The more specific the term and the more informative your ad is, the more likely you will be to attract people who want a forum. Remember, the goal is quality... quantity means nothing if you have a 0.01% sign up rate (unless the advertising is dirt cheap). Don't forget to count stickers, shirts, cds or anything else you can use to brand your name as part of your advertising campaign. Many sites forget the power of word of mouth yet word of mouth is what makes most sites what they are. The more you can feed off of what you have the better your campaign will be -- it is always easier to have your users help promote you (even if they don't realize it) than try to "cold call" new users.

Member Avatar for nathanaus

Not at all. My site makes $0 so the likelihood of me forking over cash to advertise isn't going to happen.

Sure advertising it gets it's noticed more but if you don't sell anything on your site at what point do you stop spending money on it for no $$ based returns?

Just wanted to add TedS you're my hero! I love your modern insider site :)

Member Avatar for Dani

While I previously mentioned I'm a relatively big PPC spender, I have never invested a cent in advertising out of pocket. Once I began to notice the forums growing, I, just like many other forum admins, put up AdSense and started earning a bit of revenue. Since then, I started investing a portion of revenue into AdWords.

Member Avatar for nathanaus

That makes sense. I have ad sense up but its well lets just say it's not so good.

Also I'm not sure but I think I'm technically not allowed to make money of my site. It's a fan site that is given "exclusive" things for it by the official site, that the official site doesn't show, but part of that agreement is it has to be non commercial.

Member Avatar for Ted S

nathanaus - You're right, there is a big differance betweeen a for profit business that happens to be a website and a fan site or not-for-profit site. If you aren't making money you probably don't want to spend much if anything, but at the same time people may be more likely to link to you for free given the non-profit nature of the site.

Member Avatar for nathanaus

I hadn't thought of that. The difficulty there is finding a site with the right potential target audience. It's one thing to have link everywhere, its another to have value links that attract visitors.

Member Avatar for YoungCoder

I would, and have advertised my forum (including on DaniWeb :D), and it has definately been worth it. I believe any serious board should consider advertising.

Member Avatar for shortd81

As csc gal said, I came out the pockets once and made it right back selling ads. I also reinvest a portion of my revenue into ppc (adwords) and banner/textlinks. I'm thinking about do something as TedS as far as promotion. Being I do stay in Daytona Beach. I think it would be great.

Member Avatar for hakakahn

Hi I'm new here.
I'm sure I already posted this, but can't find it!
I have small not-for-profit site with a mssageboard too adn whave got it lsited in search engines, but was wanting to push it further by paying to advertise. This is because some of the content is not on any other websites and I wanna b the first to have it etc!
so what's adwords like? Expensive?
Anyone know of any other free ways to improve traffic?
x

Member Avatar for bigcurt

If I am not mistaken adwords can get pretty expensive, I advise starting out something a little smaller scale, like advertising on a local site, all depending on what kind of site your site is.

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