This is an idea I've been thinking about for quite some time now. While my site has plenty of potential, it seems like an infusion of cash could never hurt too much. While selling advertising space may not be the best choice because of the small size of my forums, there was another idea I had and wanted to see if anyone has had any luck.

I know bigger companies/entities often have quite a bit of money to throw around. I know they won't simply "give" you money, but depending on the size of the company, $50/month or perhaps something even larger may be nothing to large companies. I guess the problem is that sponsoring a forum is probably not a particularly lucrative business venture, and unless the company is getting a return on their investment, they may not be willing to spread the love.

Has anyone had any success discussing or negotiating anything with large companies as far as sponsorship goes? Even in the form of contest prize items? How do you recommend going about it?

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I suppose it would depend specifically on what you're looking to get out of the sponsorship and what you'll be able to offer in return in terms of traffic and ROI.

Are you looking for monetary sponsorships, free services, free products or something else/more?

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this could be a way to go, i don't think that they would do it for ROI. they would probably do it for branding. if you have something specialized and a membership base that a company wants to target you might have luck doing it.

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When you say Forum Sponsor, do you mean sponsor your whole sites board? or specific forums within your board?

I've got a system that many automotive sites use where you can buy in as a "Vendor" (basically have your own forum).

Check out F-Body Online - Camaro and Firebird Forums

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In my opinion this is incredibly difficult to pull off.
You need the following things:

1. To be in a niche that relates to the potential sponsor
2. To have an active site that is well respected from the outside
3. To be an amazing sales person
4. To have some interesting and maybe novel ideas on how the sponsorship could work


Big companies didn't get that way by paying for their logo to appear in places and most of them when they get to that size are scared of things hurting their brand.

That's why I think many would be hesitant about dealing with a small discussion website - unless it's a perfect fit and the risks seem low because the site is well respected.


I have seen some interesting site sponsorship deals though.

I think it was namepros.com a week or so ago (they've changed now - if it was them) had completely rebranded their website for a domain related company.

In fact I just researched it and they've done it at least twice now, there are some snapshots below. Plus you can still see these skins in action by visiting their website and changing the skin at the bottom of the page.

I think that these companies were good matches for a full sponsorship makeover - but it would be hard to get this with a bigger company with all the red tape.

Interesting to think about though.



and

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Some sites are lucky to have that corporate sponsoring. Forum like webhostingtalk has been sponsored by rackmount for some time. It all depends to the amount of traffic your site can generate.

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They're sponsored by RackSpace .

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You are right. I meant rackspace.

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