Affiliate links in forums? Advice appreciated.

[strumpetto]

I am a new designer and just started my first site, and I don't really know how to create anything outside of word press or forums. It is very easy for me to put content in a forum format and sticky it for my readers, but I don't think it is very user friendly. The forum is a page off my main page which is a wordpress blog. I don't really know how to customize this wordpress blog. I see an area for code , but I am not going to mess with that yet.

Additionally, I don't know if a forum is very good for monetization possibilities. At namepros they get tons of traffic and people pay for ads at the top, but I would want to put affiliate links in my forum, and I don't think it would be very effective if I would only be able to put the ads at the top and bottom of forum pages. Can forum pages be shrunk to put ads on the sides? Are there programs that make the affiliate ad stick , so to speak , so that while the user is scrolling it follows them down. Any advice would be much appreciated. I am putting tons of good content up and I think I may not be able to monetize it efficiently at all with primarily a forum layout. Any comments or suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Keral_Patel]

For wordpress customization I could say use some ready made plugins and themes and it will work in most cases.

For forum monetization. Keep the ads to minimum at first. Try thinking along the lines of how to get more users and more traffic, rather then thinking how to move that ads in front of your users. (I would have not done that, It irritates a user.)

Once you have users and then if the CTR is not good enough, its the time to think about placement of ads.

 

[strumpetto]

Thank you very much for the reply,

I will attempt what you suggested with wordpress. As for the ads in my forum pages I am going to do some more research. The forum is phpbb and I testing it right now , not sure if it is robust enough. I understand what you are saying about annoying the users; I will have to really think about a forum being the best way to use affiliate links. I just don't think that they will convert well in a forum setting. Thanks again for the response.