80:20 rule - more like 99:1

**essdeekay** · 02-03-07

Here's an interesting waste of a few minutes (God this Baileys is good!).

Up there on the left is a "members" button - just under the A4U logo.

Take a look and see just how many members there are who have few if any posts.

Is this typical of forum membership in general or do different forums have different inactive:active membership ratios?

It's an interesting point as I am about embark on a forum and it looks like a lit of hardwork for little return.

Does anyone have any good resources on how to monetise a forum?

Si

**jess1** · 03-03-07

Lurkers who don't post are just as valuable to this forum as the posters, but that's because of the nature of this forum. So a4u can still monetise even from the lurkers.... via the advertising, two tier aff programs, aff get2gethers and so on.

I have no experience of monetising a forum so I cant help, pass me the baileys, Ill join you

**essdeekay** · 03-03-07

I'll bring the Bailey's if you bring the ice!

Si

**Shane** · 03-03-07

cool.. ice and baileys is sorted..

count me in... I'll bring the leggy scandanvian underwear models, a jar of marmite and collectors edition of twister

**John** · 03-03-07

Did someone mention Marmite? i'm in!

**KirstyM** · 03-03-07

I don't like marmite. Is it ok if I bring Vegemite?

Didn't this start out as a nice serious post before Shane and his Scandanavian lovelies lowered the tone?!

**jess1** · 03-03-07

I'll bring the leggy scandanvian underwear models, a jar of marmite and collectors edition of twister

Be careful what you wish for...

**essdeekay** · 03-03-07

Leave my thread alone!!!!!

Si

(note to self - too much Bailey's friday = headache on saturday)

**Elaine** · 03-03-07

Nice one Jess

now if we can swap the Marmite for an Oxo cube ...

**csn** · 03-03-07

Originally Posted by essdeekay

Does anyone have any good resources on how to monetise a forum?Si

AdSense is probably your best bet unless you have a niche forum.

http://www.hyundai-forums.com/ (not mine) uses AdSense but I suppose they could run banners for places like CarCraft, AA, RAC, Green Flag, etc.

If your forum is about everything and anything, it is harder to monetise.

A forum is great for recurring traffic (just look at how much time we all spend here) but they are often a nightmare to 'police'.

Hope this helps

**Cyanide** · 03-03-07

Originally Posted by essdeekay

Is this typical of forum membership in general or do different forums have different inactive:active membership ratios?

My forum Money Making Community is still small. It has 272 members but only 69 have ever posted. I have often wondered why people sign up to never post? There are no hidden parts of the site to visitors, and the only reason to sign up that I can think of is to post.

P.S - Sorry to deviate back to the origonal post

**loquax** · 03-03-07

Forums are good and they are also hell - so be warned as they can be a drain on your time. Admin, spam issues, user issues, arguments.. it can all take it's toll on you on an average day.

Fortunately, for the most part things are good - monetising is a tough one - and for the most part the system runs on fresh air. Adsense I think is intrusive and disrupts forum flow imo.

Posting issues - at the start of 07 we changed something on the site that forced users to make posts in order to get access to other sections. Most non-posters were receptive, some complained though. Their reasons for non posting included too busy, not having anything to say, didn't like forums, safety online, nothing to post, etc etc etc. - also some people are just scared to post for fear of making mistakes, being "told off", or just not sure how to use the forum.

Probably worth making an effort to guide newbies into knowing how things work, what they can/can't do and generally making the from registration to first post process easy!

Jason

**dunklk** · 03-03-07

A lot of the signups on my forums are due to spammers who (try to) post once and then scarper... the swines.

**shyguy0507** · 03-03-07

Originally Posted by dunklk

A lot of the signups on my forums are due to spammers who (try to) post once and then scarper... the swines.

I agree, I used to run a forum to support an old website that I used to run.

The forum was very small, but had a few regular posters. The main problem the forum faced was arguments and more annoyingly spammers - even more annoying instead of just signing up for one account and then spamming from that account, every time they posted a new thread they created a new account for themselves.

About 50% of the userbase were accounts from spammers

**Cyanide** · 03-03-07

What type of forum software did you use? I use phpBB and there is a mod you can install which doesn't allow users to post ANY type of URL until they have been a member for x days and made y number of posts. That might explain why loads of my members have never posted. They signed up to spam, but then couldn't