Advertising on Forums

[KoratCat]

Let's be honest here: idealists? Everybody can earn money or not, just like Thaivisa or other people.
As you probably know, the owner of Thaivisa used to live in KK and he's Swedish.

Actually some forums are living with the advertising and that's ok. And some are advertising on forums to live!!!
What's the problem? You don't like it, stop reading them.

I do agree that there is nothing wrong about advertising on information pages, especially if the advertising is adding to the information. So banner advertising of local businesses is most welcome. Only I don't think there should be ads on forums that distract people from enjoying the forum. I don't think Google Adsense matches with forums. The topics on forums are far too diverse to get informative ads. The Adword sensors cannot find topical information in the mash of a forum. So you get general and cheap ads only. I have decided that revenue from Google Adsense isn't high enough to spoil my forum for it. Costs for web hosting aren't that high. At my host in Germany I'm paying for four top level domains and 2000 MB webspace and DBs, mail etc. altogether about 5 € a month. How much do you think I had to spent for installing Adsense and collect a few cents revenue each month?

But a colorful informative portal which people can open or not at their own discretion with informative banner ads of decent local businesses is no harm at all.

[Jazzman (?2010)]

I totally agree with that, and I totally agree with adverts for any service that prevents people being ripped off by overpriced lawyers, architects, building firms and web designers. I make my money from what I save for others.

[roger rabbit]

For some sites running Google Ads and therefore getting Google-sponsored links is the only way to get any recommendations at all. The benefits aren't money from the people clicking the ads on your site but rather free ads for your site by Google displaying the link to your site on googlemails, search result pages etc and people having to see the link to your site. Makes the value of your site appear a lot higher at Sootle or the like. The Google-sponsored links to (the Google ads on) your site might be the only links you have. But they make it look like you got a popular site that's been recommended many times on the web.

[Jazzman (?2010)]

The ads which appear ona website or a forum as GoodleAdSense ads, bring a small revenue for the site owner. You earn a couple of cents per click through. The secret is that all the ads that appear on your site are matched to the content of your site, so that they are always relevant. It's only really worth it however if you have a site that has a lot of traffic. If you have a site that has thousands of visitors per day, you could almost live from the AdSense revenue.
A reasonably well visited theme dedicated forum, like coolthaihoouse.com, might cover its running costs and earn $10 - 20 a month. The forum might not appear to be very busy, but the number of people who visit it s pages for construction advice is very high. A forum like ThaiVisa.com or Ajarn.com could be earning 20,000 - 30,000 baht per month or even more.

I agree with KoratCat that a forum like this is too diverse to spoil with AdWord ads.

Who pays for those AdSense adverts?
Website owners who want to attract traffic to their sites and ultimately customers for their services and products. You only pay if someone cicks on your ad, but that click can be very expensive. To get your ad well positioned in those AdSEnse ads, you may have to pay 200 -400 baht per click. That guarantees that someone will visit your website, but it isno gurantee that they will buy something from you when they get there.

For Google it is a win-win situation. The profit ratio is extremely high. On its conception, it was considered to a world wonder of modern advertising. if you had bought a £1 share in Google when the company first floated, you would be a millionaire today!

Banner ads like the ones you see on some regional farang forums are vastly overprices for the amount of business they bring. A banner ad on ThaiVisa howevr does not cost much more, and it can generate a lot of new trade.

The Internet is excellent promotion for services and products because it is the only kind of media that makes truly targeted advertising possible. the internet has one disadvantage though: the word soon gets round if your product is not good, or overpriced!

[KoratCat]

. . . some are advertising on forums to live!!!
What's the problem? You don't like it, stop reading them.

As long as we're talking about regulated advertising there shouldn't be a problem. Regulated in the sense of either paid for or tolerated as some kind of privilege for participating in collecting info on a web board.

In The Free Dictionary "to advertise" is defined as "To call the attention of the public to a product or business." Some professionals like to do this on web boards without making clear that they are talking about their own business. One even went so far as to take another person's identity and recommended himself. Now is that still advertising the way defined here?

Of course us ordinary people also need information where products and services are offered. This web board does have the sections "Geschäfts-Info" (in german) and "Business-Info" (in english) where decent local and regional businesses can inform about their products and services that might be of interest to us. Furthermore we also do encourage professionals and businesspeople to contribute to discussions or info-topics with info about their own businesses where applicable. The info about a company doesn't need to come from a third person. But it isn't allowed to be deceptive or obtrusive.

On top of that a contributor to this web board has the possibility to alert to his business with a suitable avatar and up to three short text links in his signature. Of course it is expected that he contributes to the info on the board and not only posts to make his avatar and signature seen. I would assume it were not necessary to note that professionals and business people should show their best cultivated language and behavior on this board, but I have seen otherwise.