Forums VS. Blogs VS. Facebook & Monetizing

Just my 2 cents. I'm probably too old to be in anyone's target market.

I don't use Farcebook. My Dad did for a while and we kept having to clean viruses off of his machine, since he didn't have any decent AV software. Not all came from Farcebook, but some did. My sister uses it, so if any of us have any questions about it, she's our go-to source.

I worry when I see someone attempting to "monetize" something. I get really aggravated when attempting to watch a video on you-know-where only to be interrupted in mid sentence by some idiot selling a product that I would never buy. I don't drive, so don't show me car or car insurance ads. You-know-where ends in "tube" and I always insert a word rhyming with the actual start at the beginning which may offend a moderator.

I still like to read paper books. Nobody has figured out how to put pop-up ads in those yet.

I don't read the newspaper anymore, since Bozo Bezos' paper, the Washington Pest, started supplementing my Sunday-only subscription with "special" issues that they billed me for without my permission, and I called to cancel (I got some Indian who I had to tell about seven times that I DID NOT want their special offer, I wanted to CANCEL).

Sorry for the rant. I hope some younger person can give you some applicable advice.

-- Tom

There are ways to monetize just about anything on the internet, the problem is that what is really being done is monetization for the corporate conglomerates. So of course, some code and affiliate marketing products are provided for people (like your client) to use under the tease of making free money, but its largely not worth it for a host of reasons. First, it costs some money to get started up, and it cost money for maintenance, and still it takes a tremendous amount of work and clever SEO to stand out in a way that will get your page/site/whatever earning enough to break even. Second, the public is on to it, meaning its more likely to turn customers away/off then it is to earn 2 cents for a click, does anyone think a healthy business model starts with selling out interested customers and annoying them so Amazon or Google will share 2 cents with you?

You know people though, and especially when they get it in their mind that all they have to do is show an ad on the internet and let the dollars roll in, they won’t/don’t listen. But its far more beneficial and has a much higher upside to create a unique/useful product or service and to monetize that, instead of putting all your effort and work into selling some other person’s products for them. Not to mention affiliate marketing and ad marketing on the internet is extremely saturated.

But to answer you question are there ways to monetize a FB page through ads, of course there are, but you’ll need a product or service of some sort to blog/post/advertise about. It’s hardly going to be worth the effort to try and piggyback on the free money train anymore. JMHO

I see the anti ad and monetization threads all the time. But even this forum here relies on sponsors and ads to make money as well. And the biggest reasons for my client to want to monetize their site is because the site is mostly content rich and not a product or tangible item that is sellable.

The issue is when they try and drive people from social media sites to their website, they’re essentially reposting teasers on the sites and linking back to their own. And in a majority of those situations, the clicks aren’t there but the viewership is through the sites. Facebook being their main vein. They’re trying to stay away from the hard sell items like Amazon affiliations, etc. just didn’t know if it was possible.

I myself have my videos monetized in YouTube for my channels. And that’s because I’ve been a Google partner for many many years and it’s good because it takes me time to produce content. A little appreciative payment back for my efforts I always appreciate. So as a TV/Film producer (by profession) I understand the ROI aspect there.

Without the user base producing the content, it is almost like a full time job to create marketable content. I think that’s why they’re looking to monetize. As an example this forum, hundreds produce content for free to the site. A google search brings up that content to those searching and the site benefits from those users visiting and clicking ads and keeping sponsors interested. Nothing on the internet is without data collection monetization or advertising anymore.

I’m not really sure what your client is trying to do. I thought you meant something like on a FB page for his site/content to place ads or monetize some click through rate. If client has a site and is content rich and is generating content that people want/need, I think best bet would be to place ads on the site (to monetize) and then pay FB or Google for advertising to drive traffic to the client’s site. Other than that, the only way I’m aware of to use FB or Google traffic to ones own benefit is affiliate stuff.

It seems like maybe what you’re saying is your client generates a lot of content and somehow wants to monetize people viewing your client’s content on FB or something. If thats it, it sounds like a fantasy to me. For example, FB business model is that they get paid lol when they drive traffic to your page or site. FB gets paid because you or someone pays advertising fees for FB to put ads or otherwise generate traffic to you. It’s your job to monetize that traffic.

You seem like you’re experienced in this. Could you imagine if FB or some other conglomerate paid you to also generate traffic to your site or content?

IMHO, the content is more important than the medium. If your client is producing or distributing must have content with tons of views that can't be found elsewhere, it will monetize regardless of the platform.

OTOH, given the maturity of the Internet, it seems mostly what is left is low volume niches, and SEO wizardry or platform choice won't help much. $2 CPM, or whatever the going rate is these days, doesn't go far.

As a personal opinion, I avoid FB due to all the clutter and cruft. I need to use it for work as my employer uses it to communicate, and I hate it -- I find it to be a very cumbersome medium, but that's just me.

As another opinion, this forum does monetization perfectly. Compare it to a competitor, which I won't name, which is always throwing clutter in my face.

TheCoilist said:

Without the user base producing the content, it is almost like a full time job to create marketable content. I think that’s why they’re looking to monetize. As an example this forum, hundreds produce content for free to the site. A google search brings up that content to those searching and the site benefits from those users visiting and clicking ads and keeping sponsors interested. Nothing on the internet is without data collection monetization or advertising anymore.

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^^That's the trick right there. Getting your users to create the content for you. Once you get some useful content and have it set up in a way that's easy to use, they'll keep coming back and adding to it.

As far as getting users to come from FB, I think you have to offer some type of niche topic along with content organization and/or features not found on FB. For example, my forum features an in depth article section along with tech forums broken down into categories (much like this forum). We don't have any trouble getting users to come over from Facebook. Matter of fact, Google and Facebook send me about 95% of my new traffic. Further proof of this, we also have a FB page which only has a little over a thousand followers and very little traffic. The actual forum has well over 20k members with lots of traffic.

TheCoilist said:

I see the anti ad and monetization threads all the time. But even this forum here relies on sponsors and ads to make money as well. And the biggest reasons for my client to want to monetize their site is because the site is mostly content rich and not a product or tangible item that is sellable.

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One *BIG* difference I see between the ads that this forum shows and other web sites is that the ads are for things of specific interest to this forum, such as metal detectors, digging tools, etc.

There's another difference between this forum and the "tube" site I complained about in my previous post: my reading is not interrupted by a pop-up ad. Please keep in mind that pop-up ads that must be dismissed to keep viewing your content are going to draw much hate.

-- Tom

achaios said:

One *BIG* difference I see between the ads that this forum shows and other web sites is that the ads are for things of specific interest to this forum, such as metal detectors, digging tools, etc.

There's another difference between this forum and the "tube" site I complained about in my previous post: my reading is not interrupted by a pop-up ad. Please keep in mind that pop-up ads that must be dismissed to keep viewing your content are going to draw much hate.

-- Tom

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Well put Tom! I am pretty sure Vlad & Carol are not making much, if any, from the Forum. Mostly paying server and other expenses with Sponsor fees and not looking for other ads.

I was using this site as an example of specific ad and sponsorship that’s related to the ‘content’. I wasn’t implying bad things about it. Reiterating the fact that monetization is a practical requirement for the web these days in order to keep things going. And the ad fees are quite high here.. But that’s besides the point.

YouTube itself is a different type of medium, it’s not a forum where ads are placed within the content or the top header of the site on rotation. The YouTube platform is based on videos, that’s why the ads are in the video (content).

Thanks everyone for the input. I told the client that they may need to contact an SEO specific company to handle the ad request to best suit their needs on the platforms they’re using. I think they’re going to stick with a wordpress blog (for ad control) and redistribute the content on a Facebook page with links back to their site as they originally had planned.

Little late to this topic but... The Amazon affiliate route may be the way to go. Granted, I do not know the content of the site you speak of, but I am sure that there are items on Amazon that can relate. IE: books, authors, tools of the trade.

So I suggest, instead of ads, do in content hyperlinks on keywords with related Amazon items. Only one or two keyword hyperlinks per article. If they have an image of a product or item that can be related to or found on Amazon, make that image clickable directing to related page on Amazon as well.

As an Amazon Affiliate, you can link keywords and images directly to the item. Once directed to Amazon, should they purchase that item or another item, they get a percentage of that sale.

Also, make all links open the related Amazon page in a new window. That way they have original site in the background and if they close out Amazon page the directing page is still there.

It may take some time, depending on how much content they have, but they could go back and add related hyperlinks in old content. Starting with the most popular first.

One of the great hings about doing this is, it is not an ad. People find it helpful and it doesn't look like you are trying to sell them. Though they do need to put a disclamer onthe page that they are an Amazon Affiliate should they use this method.

The issue they said they had with Amazon affiliation is that they didn’t get the required number of orders within the 30 days Amazon sets. So, I’m not sure if they can renew it or not.