Can forums be effectively monetized, New guy

[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.

 

[James]

Imho alot of members wouldn't return if you had ads/links following them.

You need to focus on making the forum popular then try work something user-friendly out.