Of all the forms of monetization for forums, in-text monetization may be the most controversial. Not only are you mixing content with advertising, which can lead to concerns about the legitimacy of the content, but it is your community’s contributed content – their very words – that are being monetized.
As such, when implementing in-text monetization, forum owners must adopt a strategy that is considerate of their community. However, if it is determined to be appropriate for the audience, this form of monetization can be highly lucrative and relatively simple to implement and maintain.
This type of in-text monetization includes services like Vibrant Media, Kontera, Infolinks and AdBrite, which work by highlighting certain words on a webpage, usually turning them into links with a double underline. On mouseover, they typically display a larger advertisement that appears in an overlay. These advertisements can include text, images, rich media and more.
They are popular with forums for one very good reason: they pay very well. They tend to charge advertisers on a cost per click (CPC) basis, with clicks sometimes earning publishers over $2 per click.
The downside is that these services can be unpopular with some end users. The overlays can sometimes be easily triggered by a casual move of the mouse, leading to content being obscured from reading until the overlay is manually closed or it closes of its own accord. It is possible that some of the clicks that generate revenue are accidental clicks by users thinking they are navigating to other parts of your site, or content linked to by other members, as opposed to an advertiser’s landing page, and that can lead to discontent and suspicion on the part of your community.
That being said, these companies have been around for a long time and help many websites earn a good income. Plus, users are now largely conditioned to understand the visual cues for this form of advertising (such as the double underlined hyperlink), so they are less likely to feel “tricked.”
In terms of which partner is the best to work with, this is largely going to be a personal choice. They all function well and are reputable. Some have better advertiser relationships in certain geographies, so opt for one that has a strong local presence. However, for forums in the United States, all four aforementioned services have a strong base, so the next thing that you may want to consider is the size of your forum.
Infolinks is particularly popular for smaller sites, so if you have trouble being accepted into other providers due to your size, they are likely to welcome you and offer a very personal service. Vibrant Media and Kontera are larger and compete more aggressively for larger sites. If you have a forum in a niche they are interested in, you may be able to negotiate a guaranteed minimum monthly fee.
The final decision is going to come down to who you end up liking more: it is better to choose a company you feel you could have a better working relationship with, even if they don’t necessarily pay you the most. Relationships, trust and service matter, so pick your partner carefully and look at more than just the raw monthly revenue figures.
This form of monetization is similar to the in-text advertising services that were just described, but it differs in a few important ways. Overlays are optional; when they are used, they usually don’t contain common advertisements, but more objective information, content and price comparisons, often with the goal of informing and driving ecommerce decisions. The types of words turned into hyperlinks differ, too, in that rather than generic words being linked, more specific product and brand references are highlighted and linked to where those products can be purchased.
The main players in this space are Skimlinks and VigLink, both reputable, venture capitalist-backed companies with loyal customer bases (disclosure: Alicia Navarro, the CEO of Skimlinks, authored a majority of this section).
Both offer websites the ability to monetize existing links to retailers and/or turn product references into links to retailers. These two services can be referred to as link rewriting and link injection, respectively. You may enable one, without enabling the other. Indeed, some publishers only allow previously posted links to be affiliatized and disable link injection altogether.
In the case of existing links that are rewritten, there is effectively no difference in the end result for visitors. When they click the link, they are still taken to the same page that they would have otherwise gone to. The difference is that now, you will receive credit for any sales generated through that link.
The two companies make money by taking a percentage of the commissions and revenue generated through traffic from your website. In some cases, though, the commissions paid may be higher than you would normally receive on your own, due to increased, negotiated rates. For example, Skimlinks’ Preferred Partner Program welcomes merchants who pay publishers a higher commission than they would get if they went direct.
Even so, if you desire, they won’t have any effect on manual affiliate links that you may have already put in place on your website. You can maintain direct affiliate relationships and use these services, which will then create an extra layer of revenue you wouldn’t have otherwise received.
Forum content works particularly well with these services, enabling conversion rates often double that of normal editorial content sites. The niches that monetize most lucratively are ones with an ecommerce angle to them. For example, forums about consumer electronics, mothering, automotives, money saving tips and sport/lifestyle will, on average, do better than forums covering other topics. This is because end users often visit these forums for advice on purchasing decisions and, as such, may be more willing to click on links pointing to retailers offering products recommended in forum discussions. Subsequently, they are more likely to purchase these recommended products.
Mostly, income is generated on a cost per acquisition (CPA) basis, though some merchants do still pay on a CPC basis. However, because of the dominance of CPA, and because the merchants paying for this traffic often have less margin to play with than traditional brand advertisers, the revenue per click is almost always lower than it would be with in-text advertising networks like Vibrant Media.
Nevertheless, many forum owners still opt to run in-text affiliate link services such as Skimlinks and VigLink instead of (or at the very least, alongside) in-text advertisers, because the service is seen more as an end user utility than an advertisement and, for some forum owners, that distinction is important to the way their community perceives in-text monetization.
For example, these services will only turn very specific product references into links and the link will be to a reputable retailer that stocks that product. If enabled, the overlay will contain useful price and stocking information, which end users may find valuable as they research a purchasing decision on a forum. This is a very different experience to in-text advertisers, which turn very generic words into links to a specific advertisement. There are some forums that refuse to use in-text advertising, but use services like Skimlinks and VigLink as the experience is less intrusive and more useful to their community.
In order for services like this to function, links must be passed through a filter that allows an affiliate tag to be added to them, ensuring that credit is given to the proper publisher.
In order to accomplish this, the link must be redirected through Skimlinks or VigLink. The experience for the member is essentially the same. There is no slow down or “you are now being redirected” page. It just takes them to where they were going to go, while ensuring that you receive the credit.
While you may use a generic URL (for Skimlinks, this is redirectingat.com), you are also given the opportunity to redirect through your own domain name (for example, go.yourdomain.com).
This is preferable because it adds trust to the experience. If someone happens to see redirectingat.com in their status bar for a brief second, they may wonder if that was supposed to happen. But, if they see go.yourdomain.com, when they are already on your website, they won’t be concerned about an unknown domain.
It is worth noting that this is the only instance where a redirection domain will be seen. Search engines will still see and index the links in posts as they normally would and copy shortcut functionality is preserved.
Another benefit that comes with using in-text affiliate link services is that you have access to reports that unveil useful information about the shopping preferences of your community: what merchants they like to shop from, how much they spend on those sites, what pages are most lucrative, what days of the week are the most popular for researching purchasing decisions and so on. This information can guide content strategy and inspire additional advertising relationships with merchants that the community likes.
As an example, a well known mothering forum was surprised to discover via Skimlinks reports that a certain merchant was as popular as it was and subsequently reached out to them to establish a banner advertising relationship. In another case, a forum owner discovered how much his community liked to shop from eBay and decided to create a new section in his forum that encouraged members to post links to the items that they were trying to sell on eBay. Both of which lead us to…
In-text affiliate links work particularly well on product-centric forums and this trend has inspired many forum owners to create more targeted product categories within their forums, with the aim of concurrently earning additional revenue and providing users with more focused product recommendation channels.
The example that was just provided, of a forum owner who added a new section for eBay links, was welcomed by the users wanting more attention to their for sale products and was a good revenue earner for the forum, because the owner then received affiliate credit for traffic generated through clicks on those links.
In addition, some forums have created specific sections that encourage discussions about specific products, such as questions and reviews, as they are not only lucrative, but they also rank well on Google and drive quality traffic to the forum. These new product categories have the added benefit of being attractive to traditional advertisers.
In-text affiliate links can be used alongside in-text advertising solutions, if you wish. Skimlinks, for example, will always respect an in-text advertising solution and give it first choice of keywords, only running on the more product specific keywords rather than on generic words.
Most in-text advertising firms will insist on an exclusive contract and will claim that any other form of in-text monetization breaches the contract. Push back on this. It is fair to say that you should not use another competing in-text advertising solution at the same time, but there are other forms of in-text monetization that are complementary rather than competitive.
The services are different enough, and as long as the in-text affiliate link service does not interfere with the in-text advertising service, it should not have a noticeable impact on revenues. It should be up to you as to whether you adopt additional services.
When it comes to in-text advertising, it may be tempting to format the links so that they appear as normal links would on your webpage. You should resist this urge and stay with the familiar, standard double underlined link format. It may mean less revenue in the short term, but it will give your community the requisite visual cues to know which links are advertisements and which are not, so they can choose to interact with the advertisement knowingly.
However, with in-text affiliate links, it is not such a critical step. This is because in-text affiliate links generally take a user to a reputable merchant who sells the linked product and is a natural user experience that one might expect if the author of the forum post had linked the phrase themselves.
For example, at Skimlinks, the rule of thumb that is used when deciding if a destination site is appropriate is to ask this question: “Would the user be disappointed or surprised that this linked phrase took them to this destination?” The answer should always be “no.” As such, the default setting for links created by the Skimlinks service is to format them in the same style as other links on that site, as they are more informational than advertising. However, forum owners can edit the link format if they wish it to appear in a different style, providing a visual cue to their community that these links are being automatically injected by a third party.
This can have a further positive impact, in that by drawing attention to these informational links, end users may choose to interact with them more than if they appeared to be just another normal link on a page. The decision depends largely on your site’s content: if the site is very ecommerce and product focused, it is recommended that you use the default link format.
It is worthwhile to experiment with the number of links that you monetize per page. This is especially true for in-text advertising, but can also impact affiliate links. Your community will accept that you need to make an income from your site, but if you push it too far, your site’s reputation for integrity may suffer and you may alienate the active members of the community.
For some content sites, this is a compromise they are willing to make, as they make most of their income from search originating traffic, rather than regular members. But, for forums that rely more heavily on a loyal and active member base, your aim should be to balance income with the comfort levels of your community members.
If your forum community is incredibly sensitive to any form of in-text affiliate links, try using the lightest link affiliatization option offered by your chosen service. Skimlinks Lite, for instance, is particularly useful for sensitive communities as it only turns actual merchant names and unlinked merchant domain names into links. This means that the word “eBay” is linked to ebay.com and the unlinked written phrase “ebay.com” is turned into a hyperlink.
This approach is the least objectionable, as there is no interpretation of product phrases and the destination site is unambiguously going to be the homepage of the highlighted merchant. This approach can still yield good returns to the forum owner and is unlikely to cause offense to even the most sensitive of visitors. It is recommended that richer settings are first adopted, with regression to softer settings only once community reaction has been gauged and measured against monetization requirements.
Although it is very simple to enable these services across your entire forum, in some cases, the situation merits more selective deployment. Let’s run through some scenarios.
If you charge a membership fee for certain membership levels, or you have a very loyal but demanding core member base that you rely on for driving most of the content creation, you may want to consider disabling in-text monetization, or a certain portion of it, like link injection, for those members. Link affiliatization, where you are given credit for existing product links posted by your members, is not particularly intrusive, so you may want to continue to run it across the board. However, if those members are also very sensitive to that functionality, you may want to disable it.
Next, if you have a very large casual user base, perhaps mostly originating from search engine result pages, you may want to consider only enabling the link injection part of the service to non-logged in or search originating traffic, as you want to create an incentive for your end users to join as members and return of their own accord.
Finally, some forums enable link injection services only on posts that are more than a week old, so they monetize them only once a majority of their page views are likely to come from search results rather than monetizing the content when it is fresh to the community.
All of these settings are aiming for the same thing: to minimize the advertising impact on active members of the forum. However, another option is to just allow your members to opt-out of the service individually, either by going to a link or through a setting on your forums. The company that you use will be able to help you with all of these customization options.
The ultimate decision is going to be based on the sensitivities of your most loyal community members, but note that given a choice, everyone would prefer to not experience any advertising at all, so you may need to make a firm decision. As long as it is coupled with an explanation and disclosure on your part, the majority of your community will likely accept the adopted service settings.
If you allow them to, some in-text providers will attempt to monetize every single word on your website, instead of just in your posts and other relevant content. For example, if not properly integrated, a word in your navigation or copyright statement might be monetized. This looks odd and inappropriate.
You want to be careful to avoid injecting links into member signatures or personal profile content, which will lead to confusion. When dealing with link injection, if possible, you should limit the areas of your site that can be monetized to your text-based community content.
When using an in-text monetization service, it is critical to inform your moderators about the service, how it works and how it is set up, so they are prepared to answer the questions that invariably pop-up in forum posts, especially if you have a feedback forum.
They can then easily answer questions, calm a vocal dissenter and escalate any issues to you as they arise. Encourage them to step into discussions about the service if they are heating up and address misconceptions. There have been cases where moderators did not step in to address wild misconceptions about the service, which led to a vocal minority becoming a vocal majority and the service had to be temporarily disabled even though it was operating correctly and unobtrusively.
Moderators can also be encouraged to initiate product centric discussions, which can be incredibly popular with community members, index well on search engines and be quite profitable.
How well in-text monetization will work can depend heavily on the type of community you manage: their sensitivities, their attitudes towards monetization, their sense of ownership to the site’s content and so on. It is important that you have a solid understanding of your community or else share this fine-tuning process with your moderators or trusted key forum members, as they are best placed to predict how your community will react to each service setting.
We learn by experimentation. As you experiment, you will receive feedback. Consider it, balance it against other perspectives provided by trusted moderators and members and make changes based upon what you feel is right for your community. There is no one path.
When you are utilizing in-text monetization, disclosure isn’t an option. It’s a requirement.
The most successful implementations of in-text affiliate links are usually preceded with the forum owner publishing a disclosure post, which explains the service they are installing, why they are doing it and the principles that will govern its application. These posts tend to be appreciated by the community and set the tone for an ethical use of a service.
As mentioned earlier, there will always be a very vocal minority who categorically dislike advertising of any sort, which must always be weighed against other factors. There is likely a quiet majority who understand that a forum requires an income to sustain itself and will respect the forum owner for explaining the new service openly and honestly.
At the very least, you should have a disclosure page with these details, which is linked to from the rest of your community. If you want, this can also be accompanied with an opt-out switch allowing the individual user to opt out of being served this form of monetization from a particular service. The service that you use will be able to provide you with more information on this function.
If the party collecting the revenue is also reviewing or endorsing products or services in the forums, it is also necessary for the reviewer to offer in-line disclosure with the review, mentioning the fact that sales generated through relevant links in and around the review will lead to them earning revenue.
Even though disclosure is vital for in-text affiliate links, those who use in-text advertising should also disclose their use of such a service.
As you can see, although there are some considerations to make to ensure in-text monetization solutions are installed optimally for your forum community, the returns can be high with little ongoing effort or maintenance.
With a little analysis of the reports and data given to you by service providers, you can encourage your moderators to initiate and engage in product-centric discussions and can add additional sections to your forum to cater to this popular type of discussion, thus leading to even greater returns while at the same time creating content that indexes well on search engines and can drive high quality traffic to your forums.
That said, it is important that this thirst for easy revenue is tempered by a respect for your community, especially the members who are responsible for much of its content and ambience. It is worth making less revenue in order to achieve a balance between yield and continued, quality engagement.