Just curious what everyone uses as a revenue model if you are trying to make money off of your forum. I mean like paid subscription based, advertising based, whatever. just curious.

On AbaDSS.com we use a three way rev model, we offer paid subscriptions for users to be able to download files, have cpc and affiliate banners, and sell ad spots.

On my Claims Site we have a few ways to make money...

1. Paid Subscriptions and Donations
2. Online Classes - This generates probably the majority but we don't do them every month as they take a lot of time and commitment.
3. Banner Ads
4. Affiliate Sales

This is a closed registration site requiring an adjusters license and we have near 800 members. Because of the niche, we have the only site like ours.

Full roster with resume and firms and carriers are members as well so they can download adjuster resumes right from our sites. We've given many adjusters jobs from our site and I've landed some side stuff as well because of it.

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On my travel forum I have only one revenue model right now, cpc advertisements. Though I will be expanding it in future once we get past the 1000+ unique a day benchmark (half way there).

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Generally, CPC is used along side private advertising. It's easier to use CPC over private advertising starting out as you won't find many will advertise on a website with little to no traffic .

I have been looking into Kontera and other such advertising mediums, however, turning text into links has had mixed reviews. Some websites make pretty good revenue from such models, however, many report little to no advertising revenue using such.

It really depends on what the topic of your website is as to how much you'll really make from it.

I believe those using Kontera will find they make more off technical and "make money" websites than anything else simple due to their network advertisers.

Google has performed well in the past, however, they have not been doing as well as of late from what many are reporting. Again, it falls back on the type of website you have.

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