Most people who start a forum do it because they are driven by passion yet still need to earn decent money to keep it active. In this guide, I will show you 12 proven ways to monetize a forum in 2021.

I will also help you decide which monetization method should work great for your discussion forum.

Some of these monetization methods don’t require too much traffic for making a decent profit. With a pretty new forum, you can make a couple of hundred dollars by selling advertising or offering paid memberships. In contrast, you can make thousands with an established one by providing online courses or affiliate marketing.

1. Add a shop to your forum

As your community is built on people that share a common passion or interest, you may set up a shop and sell some merchandise.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Generating income through affiliate marketing is when you earn a commission by promoting someone else’s products on your site. It’s similar to advertising because it’s a passive income stream, and you don’t have to produce goods or services, but unlike advertising, you only get the income if your affiliate makes a sale.

Affiliate marketing is a lucrative way to monetize your audience.  If you don’t know yet much about affiliate marketing, you should check our affiliate marketing for beginners’ complete guide.

3. Create an online course

More people are taking online courses than ever before. The e-learning industry is expected to grow to about $325 billion by 2025. Online courses can take many forms for a forum owner.

The easiest way to make a course is to write it as a series of PDF documents that your reader purchases and studies on their own& very much like an eBook, but with exercises and extra resources explicitly designed to educate the reader.

Read the article here: https://monetize.info/how-to-monetize-forum