In the old days, we just put up a premium membership and filled our forum with ads and sat back and made money.
That was fine until premium memberships got boring and members started using ad blocker technology. Then the money started dropping to a point to where many people don’t see forums are a viable way to monetize content.
That doesn't mean you can’t make money with a forum anymore. You still can. You just have to be creative about it.
Here’s a few different ways to make money with your forum in 2025 and beyond that are not old school strategies that don’t work anymore.
These should be posts with more words and headings (like this article). The article should be of high-quality, informative, and valuable to the reader. It should be focused on solving their pain points (like making money with a forum).
At the bottom of the post (or top), add a link to your tip jar and ask for a small donation to help support you for writing the content.
I recommend using Buy Me a Coffee to get tips. Note: that’s an affiliate link. If you use it, I’ll earn a commission, but it will not impact your price.
Many of your members are likely willing to donate a small amount to you for the work you put into your forum and articles.
Affiliate Links can earn you a commission if people buy or use the service through your link. Affiliate marketing is a common way of making money online. Affiliate Links are also less intrusive when compared to ads because links aren’t annoying to see.
As I did above – make sure you put a disclaimer for the affiliate link as it is often required by law in most countries.
Use a few affiliate links in your content but don’t go overboard as using too many will give the member the same effect as ads and it might look and be annoying to deal with.
Traditional premium membership is boring. Custom user titles, extra PM space, and a banner under your name isn’t really worth spending money on these days. If you want to sell premium membership, you have to give more.
Take a lesson from paid online communities and what they provide for their customers.
Offer courses, premium discussion categories and boards, webinar access, 1:1 consulting, apps, discounts to products, and premium resources.
The more premium benefits you offer, the more realistic it will be to actually sell premium membership on your forum. It just needs to be worth paying for. The customer needs to get something out of it that addresses their pain points.
The used to let you control the ad more and decide where it gets placed. Now the controls are harder to deal with, and you’ll often have to have a plugin to be able to work with them. If you just let Google decide, it will present ads in the most annoying way which will likely run members off.
Plus, you don’t make all the earnings. Google is the middle person, and they have to get their cut.
Instead of making pennies, make all the profit by selling ads directly. Then you can control where the ad goes and how it looks based on your advertising standards. You also get to decide on the price.
If it was me, I’d offer products like professional posting services or services like consulting on how to start a forum, grow it, and profit from it. I’m an expert in those areas as I have been doing it for over 25 years. I can offer those types of products and services and people would likely buy them at some point.
Do the same with your forum and niche if you have expertise or knowledge to be able to provide such products and services to your audience.
Now I want to hear from you. In what ways are you making money with your forum? How are you perfecting this technique to ensure revenue growth?
That was fine until premium memberships got boring and members started using ad blocker technology. Then the money started dropping to a point to where many people don’t see forums are a viable way to monetize content.
That doesn't mean you can’t make money with a forum anymore. You still can. You just have to be creative about it.
Here’s a few different ways to make money with your forum in 2025 and beyond that are not old school strategies that don’t work anymore.
Add a Tip Jar to Your Articles
Write articles about your niche and publish them on your forum.These should be posts with more words and headings (like this article). The article should be of high-quality, informative, and valuable to the reader. It should be focused on solving their pain points (like making money with a forum).
At the bottom of the post (or top), add a link to your tip jar and ask for a small donation to help support you for writing the content.
I recommend using Buy Me a Coffee to get tips. Note: that’s an affiliate link. If you use it, I’ll earn a commission, but it will not impact your price.
Many of your members are likely willing to donate a small amount to you for the work you put into your forum and articles.
Affiliate Links
As you can see from my link above, I included an affiliate link to Buy Me a Coffee.Affiliate Links can earn you a commission if people buy or use the service through your link. Affiliate marketing is a common way of making money online. Affiliate Links are also less intrusive when compared to ads because links aren’t annoying to see.
As I did above – make sure you put a disclaimer for the affiliate link as it is often required by law in most countries.
Use a few affiliate links in your content but don’t go overboard as using too many will give the member the same effect as ads and it might look and be annoying to deal with.
Paid Forum Membership
I talked about premium membership being boring in the introduction of this article.Traditional premium membership is boring. Custom user titles, extra PM space, and a banner under your name isn’t really worth spending money on these days. If you want to sell premium membership, you have to give more.
Take a lesson from paid online communities and what they provide for their customers.
Offer courses, premium discussion categories and boards, webinar access, 1:1 consulting, apps, discounts to products, and premium resources.
The more premium benefits you offer, the more realistic it will be to actually sell premium membership on your forum. It just needs to be worth paying for. The customer needs to get something out of it that addresses their pain points.
Sell Ads Directly
Google AdSense ads look terrible on forums.The used to let you control the ad more and decide where it gets placed. Now the controls are harder to deal with, and you’ll often have to have a plugin to be able to work with them. If you just let Google decide, it will present ads in the most annoying way which will likely run members off.
Plus, you don’t make all the earnings. Google is the middle person, and they have to get their cut.
Instead of making pennies, make all the profit by selling ads directly. Then you can control where the ad goes and how it looks based on your advertising standards. You also get to decide on the price.
Sell Products and Services
If you’re an expert in your niche (and you should be), you can create products and services that address the biggest pain points of your target audience and use you forum to sell them.If it was me, I’d offer products like professional posting services or services like consulting on how to start a forum, grow it, and profit from it. I’m an expert in those areas as I have been doing it for over 25 years. I can offer those types of products and services and people would likely buy them at some point.
Do the same with your forum and niche if you have expertise or knowledge to be able to provide such products and services to your audience.
Final Thoughts
Making money with a forum isn’t impossible these days. However, it requires more work now than it did back in the early days when ads and simple premium membership worked. If you can’t put in the work, then it’s not going to work for you.Now I want to hear from you. In what ways are you making money with your forum? How are you perfecting this technique to ensure revenue growth?